The Howrah Station- Boey Kim Cheng

To purchase a ticket out
I pick my way through the carnage,
sidestepping souls felled at one wild stroke,
reducedto withered stalks scattered
between puddles of excrement. The leveller
is working overtime here, tireless,
laing out a field of maimed mortals,
half0killed, untended, unfinished,
his indiscriminate scythe
littering with travails
the pilgrim's path.

Like an adroit footballer, I dribble
my laundered self past
the tackles, eluding the lunging pleas
for mercy, warding eyes
which draw the heart into their dark pits.
This is not a waiting hall; there is no destination
for these unfit for travel.
It is a terminal ward. Enoiugh revelation
to stop all seekers carrying urgent requests
for truth in beauty and beauty in truth
in their tracks. What are we doing here?>
Is this the right address? The capital
of God? Art's proper haunt?

If poetry could drum up courage,
correct the economists, reform the politicans,
and bake a million loavesm my presence
needs no apology.
But who eats poetry?

This morning I made a detour
to the museum. A man was on
the pockmarked pavement outside.
If you can call him a man,
you may as well consider him
an artist. Legs disappeared into the earth,
ande short clubs for arms, fingers
no longer than the broken pastels they held.
Oblivious to the scorching sun, wrapped
in clouds of fumes and noise, he laid out
our Lord Jesus with a scared heart, smiling,
peaceful on the uneven ground
Consummate attention. Necessity
fusing prayer and art in perferct calm.
What I lacked glowed in him.
He rubbed off the edges, precise,
exacting, insistent on clarity of vision,
and went on to produce a youthful Mary
from a soiled pciture given perhaps
by the sisters at the mission, to carry him
through and earn his daily bread with.

I tossed an offering. The rupee rolled
onto the bleeding heart, its dull gleam
settling almost soundlessly home,
waking echoes
in an unplugged conscience.