Varanasi - December,2014 Poem by Mihir Chitre

You unwelcomed me with fog
on a blinding night
hurrying into history
like the feet of your ghaats

As I crawl up
the rickety slope
of your refrigerated afternoon
I am spiral and backward
in time’s forsaken bedroom

where chaste Hindi adulterates
several slips of tongues
and the languid orality of people
mulls over suicidal lungs

You rise at sundown
by the Ganges
You bathe, you shiver
urinate, maneuver
by the Ganges

Your murky bylanes
meet at the Ganges
The redness of your paans
the green of your nimbu chai
the butts of your secret cigarettes -
Your whole existence is a pull-up
with the dumbbell of a dense dream

In moments, you loop me
In moments, I loop you back

Your hi and bye are twins
born out of fog
and your river-lamps afloat
man’s finest intricacies

You and I, will both live on,
Varanasi
the less I know,
the better it is.