Ode To Drowning

is it or is it not the cold monsoon bearing the shape of my dark lord, speaking of his cruelty his going away? — Nammalvar i. This is an ode to be sung in the latest hour of night when the rain clouds have gathered over shingled roofs and blue-skinned gods with magical flutes seduce the virgins to dance For there is no love without music No rain without peacocks perched in branches of sandalwood trees with plumes of angels and voices of thieves pleading for their loves to return ii. If rain signals the lover's return then I am lost in the desert burning like the brain fever bird looking for images of you through mesquite and teak Because there's no sign of you or what I know to be as you only clouds adrift in a vanquished sky like vines of throbbing arms and mouths drinking at the shore intoxicated with the night iii. There are as many ways of yearning as there are ways for rain to fall slow incessant gentle squalling melancholy warm It's that old idea of drowning in another to find the self the compliance that water gives in form and depth to something else But what if the humming bees are quiet and the garlands of jasmine have been laid out to dry How long to wait for everything to turn heavy with flower immodestly green washed of dirt iv. It's desire after all that spins us Demands to be praised as though it were new like the stillness before the first monsoon when the hymen of the earth is torn into and the brazen smell of damp fills the air Must there be surprise after we've thundered and rolled and appeased our thirst when the silence returns again In truth isn't it a waiting that never ends like the chasm between the cycles of the world Between separation and union longing and abandonment And somewhere between the waning isn't this what we're left with the music of uncertainty the aftertaste of rain