Poems - JP Melville

Enfolding This Mumbai 2001 jp melville Sleeping curled tightly on top of crumbling walls Bundles of ragged cloth, bodies, men Woman squatting, scrubbing, washing clothes Sidewalk transformed as washboard People ‑ public, private lives moulded into nakedness no colour, colourless lives of dust and grime. Street sides cracked curbs Rusted railings Muck of wash water, sewage flowing listlessly in the gutter Surprise, two churches ‑ one Catholic, one Evangelist A Hindu temple pressed in among peeling buildings Discovery hidden in a nameless alley ‑ a wedding, a tent, sense of colour splash of bright red and yellows, greens. What a multitude Every space packed with busyness, dwellings Shacks and shanties, cardboard and sisal cloth Five floor apartments, relics of the past with shuttered balconies ‑ natural air Modern glass buildings ‑ electricity dependent Printed paper advertisements plastered on portals, picke...

  For Monday I Wait No More. november 2001 (Azerbaijan) jp melville There is war. Said. One does not have to accept war. Said. There is war. Said. Men die. Children go hungry. Dirt grows under the nails. Bottles get smashed. Crows roost or pick on the unspeakable. Rain falls and mud thickens. Cold cuts into fingers. Low voices dissolve into dark skies studded with stars. Wind whispers lonely through rattling dried leaves. Ragged dogs with ribs showing root in forgotten garbage. Widowed young women hunger after men’s bodies they cannot have. Rivers flow sleepily along empty banks. Rust gathers on steel posts. Listless smoke curls from cold stove pipes. A plant tips, dried, the stem snaps, the pod falls slowly, Slow through an arc of endless time, Sweeps from standing tall, The sun and clouds swirling above its drunken toppling, Speeding ever so more quickly, Down, Plummeting down,...