—Calcutta 1974

 

A fistful of dough, torn from dough,

above the flour-gritty rolling ground, sponge moon

balled into being between my palms, quashed,

finger-pressed, but stubbornly ovulate, no matter

how the stone beneath it turns, no matter

the pressure of the spindle, as if a moon ballooned,

went flat, fell from round sky to flat earth,

grew and shrank, shrank and grew, between rotating rock

and rolling wood, beneath the upstrokes of will and practice,

between the axis of scripture and angle of verse,

as if what transpires between Shape and Shaper

is not wholly in the hand of either.