Kamala Das, Your Summer

Kamala, Your summer Is a summer Not of heat and dust, Ruffle and high temperature, Heat soaring up, The loo blowing it hard, Intensive heat falling, No relief from But the summer as siesta One of bodily love, Attraction and repulsion, Love and hate, Gluing, Electro-magnetic sensation, The fire of lust and greed Burning within And the thirst unquenchable. The outward summer meaning nothing To the lovers Feeling the summer of the body, In heat and dust and ruffle, Sweating and caressing At noontime, Made for each other. Kamala Das, in love, It happens, Happens so, Physical and bodily love Wanting it more, Seating and loving And yours is a tale like that Into the steps of Vatsyayana, Freud and Rajneesh, Lawrence, Plath and Wright And what more to say to? A spoilt girl-child were you Who kept blaming the husband Rather than yourself, You love-mad Radha, Love-mad Mira, Spiritually sick But physically demanding, Going after the erotic, Making the graphics. Wearing a rudraksha Posed you as a sadhvi, In Indian adhu With a ladki or…, Wearing a tulsimala Posed you as a Vaishnavite, But were not, Kamala, Meditate you not, Kamala. A yogi not, nor a yogan, But a bhogi Were you in your philosophy of life, Delighting and deriving from The sculptures And stone carvings Of Konark, Ajanta-Ellora and Khajuraho; Reading with zest The sambhoga to samadhi theory.