first morning in roslin
BY VARUN RAVINDRAN
The rooster, the bicycle bell, the seagull
tapping loam to lure out worms—even the sea;
none of these unexpected. But then,
offstage, a drunken trombone slurring
wayward melody, a Schubert melody: an engine
pulling his tin-thatch wares around a gorge.
A cow, maybe, lowing up slopes of plush and thistle,
dung, dome, dew. And her bell: a flattened
soup-can, halved and set loose by a Demiurge, around
two clanging pebbles and a rusted key. This light
makes flesh of things; mired in skin the eye
only traces the ripening-outward to soundfell where air
pleats like muslin; air, like music, sound trans-
ubstantiated, lashing in, out of being, brimming
once more my grandfather, his hand in mine
a sparrow. And a street in Madras ends in a row of huts,
and a woman selling peanuts sings, breaks your heart;
and at the periphery the mackled crescent
of sunthrush sea throbbing as behind throat.
Enclosed by nothing, attached to nothing,
all-entwined, like rain, it’s that sea murmuring
beneath chirp, beneath chime, beneath silversilt-origami-
light so freely given, folding, unfolding, in his palm,
on mine, the dirt, a word ever on the verge, the sea.