}} The smokers outside Bronglais Hospital |

Poetry at Sangam

SangamHouse

 










The smokers outside Bronglais Hospital

are gods of an old world—
The sun thrashes down
                                          or the rain
and they weave incessantly their smouldering threshold.

From time to time the cool doors part
and one goes in or out
                                          with stick or bag
or gown blown out at the back;

the nurse in her mint-fresh uniform
wrinkles her nose;
                                          the emergency
corridor turns on its squeaky bright wheel…

The smokers meanwhile (in not so many words)
are proving how all things in motion
                                          have first to show up
at the half-way mark; ergo

and by minute degrees –
as Xeno might have mentioned
                                        had he stopped for a light
outside Bronglais – the cigarette is in principle un-

finishable. So the burnt herb travels for ever
the void between body and ghost;
                                      the same distance for all of us
and oh, a finger’s length at most