Nani

Nani the pregnant maid hanged herself / In the privy one day. For three long hours / Until the police came, she was hanging there, / A clumsy puppet, and when the wind blew / Turning her gently on the rope, it seemed / To us who were children then, that Nani / Was doing, to delight us, a comic / Dance. The shrubs grew fast. Before the summer’s end / The yellow flowers had hugged the doorway / And the walls. The privy, so abandoned, / Became an altar then, a sunny shrine / For a goddess who was dead. Another / Year or two, and I asked my grandmother / One day, don’t you remember Nani, the dark / Plump one who bathed me near the well? Grandmother / Shifted the reading glasses on her nose / And stared at me. Nani, she asked, who is she? / With that question ended Nani. Each truth / Ends thus with a query. It is this designed / Deafness that turns mortality into / Immortality, the definite into / The soft indefinite. They are lucky / Who ask questions and move on before / The answers come, those wise ones who reside / In a blue silent zone, unscratched by doubts / For theirs is the clotted peace embedded / In life, like music in the koel’s egg, / Like the lust in blood, or like the sap in a tree...