Blood

When we were children, / My brother and I, / And always playing on the sands, / Drawing birds and animals, / Our great grandmother said one day, / You see this house of ours, / Now four hundred years old; / It’s falling to little bits / Before our very eyes, / The walls are cracked and torn / And moistened by the rains, / The tiles have fallen here and there, / The windows whine and groan, / And every night / The rats come out of holes / And scamper past our doors. / The snake-shrine is dark with weeds / And all the snake-gods in the shrine / Have lichen on their hoods. / it hurts me, she cried, / Wiping a reddened eye, / For I love this house, it hurts me much / To watch it die. / When I grow old, I said, / And very very rich / I shall rebuild the fallen walls / And make new this ancient house. / My great grandmother / Touched my cheeks and smiled. / She was really simple. / Fed on God for years, / All her feasts were monotonous / For the only dish served was always God / And the rest mere condiments. / She told us how she rode her elephant / When she was ten or eleven / Every Monday without fail / To the Siva shrine / And back to home again / And told us of the jewel box / And the brocade from the north / And the perfumes and the oils / And the sandal for her breasts / And her marriage to a prince / Who loved her deeply for a lovely short year / And died of fever, in her arms. / She told us / That we had the oldest blood, / My brother and she and I, / The oldest blood in the world, / A blood thin and clear and fine / While in the veins of the always poor / And in the veins / of the new-rich ones / Flowed a blood thick as gruel / And muddy as a ditch. / Finally she lay dying / In her eightysixth year, / A woman wearied by compromise, / Her legs quilted with arthritis / And with only a hard cough / For comfort; / I looked deep into her eyes, / Her poor bleary eyes, / And prayed that she would not grieve / So much about the house. / I had learnt by then / Most lessons of defeat, / Had found out that to grow rich / Was a difficult feat. / The house was crouching / On its elbows then, / It looked that night in the pallid moon / So grotesque and alive. / When they burnt my great grandmother / Over logs of the mango tree / I looked once at the house / And then again and again / For I thought I saw the windows close / Like the closing of the eyes, / I thought I heard the pillars groan / And the dark rooms heave a sigh. / I set forth again / For other towns, / Left the house with the shrine, / And the sands, / And the flowering shrubs / And the wide rabid mouth of the Arabian Sea. / I know the rats are running now / Across the darkened halls, / They do not fear the dead, / I know the white ants have reached my home / And have raised on walls / Strange totems of burial. / At night, in stillness, / From every town I live in / I hear the rattle of its death. / The noise of rafters creaking / And the window’s whine. / I have let you down / Old house, I seek forgiveness; / mother’s mother’s mother, / I have plucked your soul / Like a pip from a fruit / And have flung it into your pyre; / Call me callous / Call me selfish / But do not blame my blood / So thin, so clear, so fine, / The oldest blood in the world / That remembers as it flows / All the gems and all the gold / And all the perfumes and the oils / And the stately / Elephant ride...