Ashok Niyogi on the Other Side of the
A Kolkata Charity Ward
A dormouse writes poetry with me. He never comes to
bed though (I assume it is a he). We are not friendly.
I think he has overgrown ears. He thinks I am too
noisy. I am sure he goes down for dinner with the
family, just as I do, but he has never dined with me.
Now that it's spring, I have lit the lamps for my
gecko. Most unsocial fellow, first he goes into
hibernation and then waits for me to light the lamps
and let the insects come, my gecko never dines with
me.
Both are healthy, they insure with Kaiser Permanente
and have just had their cavities filled. In Fremont
Kaiser has beautiful flowers. In Concord they
transplanted adult palms.
But dormice, geckos, flowers and palms, catheters and
endoscopes, they all mutate.
Sewer rats nibble away at festering brains in drains
when it rains and hospital wards are flooded. Bandages
are sodden with rainwater and blood, from the deluge,
from the flood.
Doctors tap at stethoscopes to differentiate between
the pitter-patter of raindrops and pulse drops, and
then leave it to nurses anyway.
One side of her forehead has collapsed and yet they
think she will live. The cinema of a life unfulfilled,
destined for some infinitely larger, infinitely more
extraordinary thing. Away from the warmth of a ten
foot square of home and hearth, amidst carnivorous
sewer rats. The poor will hope. Mute amongst mutants,
they will quietly breathe. The fetid smells and
inferior fruit for corpses in cushion less corridor
floors.
My dormouse is also a carnivore. But he nibbles at
nuts. Just as people nibble their lives away in
temples just past Livermore.
I shall partake of your flesh and drink your blood. O
Son of God, give me godliness. Cauterize my wounds
with rusted scalpel oxidized in your Kolkata rain.
Wafer and wine and scarlet robes.
And red hibiscus with polluted sacred water from
mouths of corpses. Planks on which they transport
themselves are for resale. Skullcaps in the Synagogue
and intense pain. Maggots in my armpit holes and
luncheon with a rotting corpse.
And yet Falstaff will laugh.
© Copyright Ashok Niyogi 2006