Whispers From Beyond The Casurina Tree
He sits watching the sky.
Clouds speed across his vision.
He sees faces in the clouds
watches them take shapes of people
to torment him.
The waves from beyond the casurina trees
carry frenzied voices,
voices of people who conspire against him -
the postman, the milk boy,
the cousin with large side burns
put their heads together to laugh at him.
He sits miles away on the sea shore
Near his rehab home.
The bell rings for dinner,
he keeps away
thinking that chicken is stirred into sambar.
His mother shrunk and shrunk
While he grew fat and fat.
He is guilty of eating his mother.
He shrinks and shrinks
so that his dead mother would fill up
He pulls himself back to his room
and lies down
face set towards the door
waiting for his sister
to come and feed him,
say it is OK to eat, to live.
Sister who has been dead for years
alive only for the brother
to whom people are fossilised in the darkness of his mind.
