Periamalai

Regiments of cloud still
And low relate near to far for
The eye which watches across
Broad floodwater the slow
Phases of autumnal light.

Southward the hills are grey
With reconnoitring rain.
Soon at the dark fortnight’s end
Deepavali lamps will be lighted
At the porch of a wild season.

Westward those lower hills–
Isolated geological upstarts–
Are sanctified by shafts
Of uncovenanted light.

Toward and away the soldierly
Palmyras march. Lop-eared lambs
Bleat in the damp fields.

Soon the rains will come, and
Wildly. Already this has been
A rainy year, but even so
The winds are stirring for
Karthigai Deepam and the full-
Moon of Siva’s triumph;

And the rains will bring their
Thumping fury, loosening
Half-hearted roots for
The tearing gales that will lay low
So many proud trees.

Rain falls out of the long

Grief of sky. Blood falls,
A dark invitation,
Seminal of faith
And prayer, a seeking out
Of soils beneath
Uprooted rock and carven cross,
Under the assassin’s shrewd
Thrust, under the doming,
Kite-hoisting seawinds of Coromandel
On the tumbled top of Periamalai

The blood falls, in-searching,
Upward-urging, but to stimulate
What shoots?
Thomas’s stony cross
But bodies forth the age-old crucifixion
Of the earth on iron bone….

And to stone or soil
It will all be the same.
The lorn and lordly Lamb subsumes
All immolations

Note: Periamalai, otherwise known as St Thomas’s Mount, a hill close to the city of Madras, is the traditional site of the martyrdom of the Apostle Thomas.