A.K. Ramanujan

It must come as leaves to a tree or not at all yet it comes sometimes as the black hen with the red round eye on the embroidery stitch by stitch dropped and found again and when it's all there the black hen stares with its round red eye and you're...

In Madurai,city of temples and poets,who sang of cities and temples,every summera river dries to a tricklein the sand,baring the sand ribs,straw and women's hairclogging the watergatesat the rusty barsunder the bridges with patchesof repair all ov...

Yet like grandfatherI bathe before the village crowthe dry chlorine watermy only Gangesthe naked Chicago bulba cousin of the Vedic sunslap soap on my backlike fatherand thinkin proverbslike meI wipe myself drywith an
Sears turkish towellike m...

Images consult one another, a conscience- stricken jury, and come slowly  to a sentence

I resemble everyonebut myself, and sometimes seein shop-windows  despite the well-knownlaws  of optics,the portrait of a stranger,date unknown,often signed in a cornerby my father

Composed as I am, like others, of elements on certain well-known lists,father's seed and mother's egggathering earth, air, fire, mostly water, into a mulberry mass,moulding calcium,carbon, even gold, magnesium and such, into a chattering self tang...

1 Lord of new arrivals lovers and rivals: arrive at once with cockfight and banner— dance till on this and the next three hills women's hands and the garlands on the chests of men will turn like chariotwheels O where are the cockscombs and where t...

When she left me after lunch,
I read for a while
But I suddenly wanted  to look again and I saw the half-eaten sandwich, bread, lettuce and salami, all carrying the shape of her bite