The Anamalai Hills

There are no clocks here at Anamalai, no cock crowing / the morning in, as the muezzin’s call from cold mosques, / only the mist so absentmindedly lingering on, long past / the dawn’s legitimate hours and the invisible / bird’s crazed cry, occasionally from the mosquito tree. / From somewhere within my heart / the mist ascends, the mountains awake, / perhaps the rains are over and the swamps are dry again. / It had been only the mist rising against the hills, / clinging and unclinging as it must always do, it had / no kinship with the hills, no blood-tie, / yes, it was at best a minor collision, nothing else. / hear the mountain speak: I was alone, I am alone, I will be alone... / With the languor of queens, enceinte, the fog ascends / the stairways of the sky. Anamalai stands undisturbed. / Wrapped in the shrouds of betrayals, / the woman walks alone. The mountain seems deaf-mute, / but the flesh of her spirit is but its flesh, / and, her silence, / despite the tumult in her blood, / its destined hush.