Part 44

Subtle associations, the nature aesthetic, the sublime
moment of awareness: I was grappling with Haiku.
There was no starting point. Not here, in the morass of
the city. To even acknowledge the want of the rain is
to know smog-blackened dreams, the wretched lust
of the mundane inside an unrequited morning, human
refuse, refused humans, stained sky, bubbling sores, lies
leading to lies, streets leading to streets leading fucking
nowhere. There was little to exalt. Little that could exalt.
Hope (or something darkly wishful) came in the minutes
before dawn, when the night slipped into the silence
between squirrel and crowsong. The secret to survival is
not seeing, not feeling, not counting. But poetry that
wants solitude and beauty cannot sprout in yellow
streetlight. We learn from fear to move away from the
path of a stranger, at night. We learn to tune out the
clamour by whispering, by shrinking, by unlearning sound.
We learn not to fall in love by falling, by breaking, by
practice. We learn not to grieve from unrelenting physics,
from concrete sunsets, from the weight of the unsaid. We
learn to live by waiting: for summer, for the monsoon, for
the monsoon to end, for gulmohars to bleed again: another
puddle — / another stray dog / takes one step on the moon