Nitoo Das (India)

​Notes on the Rhododendron at Laitkynsew
 
1.
This flower steals your eyes.
You have nowhere else to look.
 
2.
When it falls, leaden with love
and a woman's accusations,
the earth cries out its name.
 
3.
I am so alone here, but I walk on mud
clothed in red flowers and tell myself
go there, go there.
 
4.
The tree screams with birds.
They recur, pollen-blessed.
 
5.
It will take some time to drip its frills
dry in the wind. It is not yet time for this bud.
 
6.
This flower cannot birth a garden, etc.
 
7.
It needs dirt, the mark of teeth,
the sullen smell of decay.
 
8.
It is both trance and nightmare: the colour
of a million smiles; the colour of gradual death.
 
9.
It seduces you into a border.
It wants you to make sense of crowds.
 
10.
It is a many-syllable flower escaping
the drumbeats of its name.
It is too vast for this poem.