the plague comes back — he’s trying to bolt the door — the trial exhausts him — to become water again he gambols with a bottle — come dusk the children ask — when will you return — there is an iron gate before the answer — a haunted house of mercy — an old friend survived a snowstorm — he befriends survivors alone — they all arrive with Blender’s Pride — a silent hustle — if not another then work at the shop bleeds him thin — if not the work a sore throat — or something gastric — a hawk in his calves — whiskey is nostrum — health allows music — a neighbour has a baby — a cousin acquires a Chevrolet — someone’s wife dies — that bitch wouldn’t open the door after 10 — he’s sacked a lazy worker — we hail the return of Rama — he examines used recrackers crispened by joy — pours whisky to bear the noise — and make some — boastful as god — coat-pocket elixir — numb-eyed children gather half-matchsticks — his wife feeds the walls — palpable the words he’s never so much as whispered over a sink — I am trying to quit — roadkill — a mother’s hand for vultures — he holds lick-fast to his beliefs — an old monk — his pristine celibacy not of esh but an acceptance that all is but esh — who here is not a refugee of dark arms — he demands — give me a name — pain is birthright — what you analyze as delusion is how the ocean interprets rivers — I can quit whenever I want — a repit of conviction — a whalegrey wick ickers with a ame dancing since time felt like armor — but I do not want to quit — we wonder why — all our whys a boomerang inhisgut—we decide no man can want to die — even those who want to die want to die to no longer possess esh that dies — he but fails — as a koel shotgunned midsong — a bath of g-feathers — not a man of arrows — yet cursed like Karna to lose knowledge at the crescendo of warfare — he peddles gifts — condes to the children — I guzzled glass after glass only after I married your mother — and more — after she carried his mirrors — he lines each limb of his wife like an upturned bottle on an old saw-table — his pistol cocked to crack each glass muscle — no truth ought to be spoken twice — in each retelling — as a lung exposed to Delhi air — cancers appear — but look at this red lung charred rotten — he has dug it out of his chest — to show-and-tell to the children — they believe him now — even their mother who has one lone hair of faith believes him — the day has been still as a belly after the nal gulp — without cure now — his blood memory — ag sts — dog breath — yet the cure is demanded — no one wants to leave barefoot — so he stalks her footsteps to each corner of the house — it must be you who waved me into this bile-threshed sea — but I who am caged here can make the best of anything