Turning Into Men Again

This morning men are returning to the world, Waiting on the sides of blackened pavements For a rickshaw to carry them away On the sharp pins and soles of their dancing feet. They must go to the houses of their childhoods To be soothed. They must wait for the wheels To appear from the thin arm of road. They must catch the crack in the sky Where the light shifts from light to dark To light again, like the body in the first stages of love; Angering, heightening, spreading: Bent knees, bent breath. Now they are moving, changing colours. Women are standing at the thresholds of doors Holding jars of oil, buckets of hot water and salt, Calamine, crushed mint and drink. Some crawl into their mother’s laps, Collapse against the heavy bosoms of old nannies, Search for the girl who climbed with them To the tin roof for the first time. Inside, in the shadows of pillars, Fathers and grandfathers are stepping down From picture frames with secrets on their lips, Calling the lost in from their voyages.