DEBORAH CASILLAS
The Porters at Kalka Station
For the din, the grit, the platform crowds,
for the station chaos and the hungry dogs,
the chai wallah pouring his cups of chai,
for taxis and rickshaws and the bus from Shimla,
the daily trains on the track to Delhi,
for the heft of luggage on top of a head,
and the twelve hour shifts the porters work,
and the rupees paid for the license fees,
and faded red tunics like a moth’s dull wings,
for the patience to wait in a strip of shade,
for searing sun, the late day chill,
and the snowy peaks of the Dhauladhars,
for the layer of flesh and the network of veins,
the tendons’ web, the scaffold of bones,
for the bone-thin men and the string of years,
for the beggar stretching out his hand
and the child with a bandaged stump,
for the twisted body and the ruined dream,
and the marigolds hung from a vendor’s arm,
for the incense and statues and candle flames,
the chanted prayers at the temple door,
for India’s thirty-three million gods,
and the Hindu god that will save them all,
for the god who blesses the household shrine,
for the water, the bell, the tray of sweets.
The Unreal
Even freed to enter
skin deep into the teeming bazaars
of India, horns and bumpers
and spinning wheels
even that close, Delhi haze,
village dust,
hawkers running beside me,
shiny bangles, sandalwood beads,
even with children’s hands brushing an arm,
a shoulder, voices calling hallo, hallo,
even with rubbish and stench –
every plastic bottle and bag,
every discarded can –
I know it’s not real.
I brush by, avert my eyes,
this short time only, this sanctioned glimpse,
then I’m back in the starred hotel,
marble floors, acres of perfect lawn,
a garland of marigolds around my neck.
I am so far away and so clean,
and the two elephants coming down the street,
pink-mottled trunks painted with flowers,
are not real,
the caravan of camels, the loaded carts,
the jingling bells, are not real,
the women in luminous, jewel-colored saris
balancing stones on their heads
are not real,
and the barefoot sadhu wrapped in a golden robe,
smeared with ashes of the dead –
I know he can’t be real.
This grand palace I return to –
doormen in turbans and jodhpurs,
peacocks grazing on lawns –
only this can be real,
though somewhere
in the back of my skull
I feel the bubble I live in
is bursting, scattering
in a million shivers of light.
The Absent Tigers of Ranthambore
Rajasthan
In failing light
paw print in dust
long-tailed langurs bark alarms
spotted deer freeze
behind the ancient hill fort’s
crumbled walls
sun’s slow descending light
time stalled
barely visible now
ruined temple in the distance
the maharajah’s
manmade lake shadowed
where Sambar deer
stand belly-deep chest-deep neck-deep
bark-brown in green marsh algae
held-breath hush of late afternoon
splash of deer wading
through plant-choked water
egret’s wing-beat
a heron settling on a doe’s back
too far away to hear
the marsh crocodile’s lazy slide
sit with the animals
a man once told me
a meditation
the mind emptied
feel how the earth slides down
tiger threads like silk
through moon-silvered grass
sloth bear’s slow progress
in dhok tree thickets,
pink-hued leaves late falling
Remember the stillness of this hour –
you will never be here again.
Deborah Casillas has published her poems in Kalliope, Sycamore Review, The MacGuffin, The Ontario Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Crab Orchard Review, Squaw Valley Review, Silk Road Review, Prairie Schooner, North American Review and New Ohio Review.
