Page 5 - Poems

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SOMEWHERE AFTER MIDNIGHT

leep – and all intents – undone
S(all, whether earnest, bow-tied
ones or those with crumpled skirts,
collars askew) by a steeplechase
at Nation: down corridors, up stairs,
over glowering, illegal puddles,
past the maze of entranceways
to Lines Two, Six and more, side-
stepping parents with toddlers
in tandem buggies glazed to vernal
sunrise – tongue deploying pardon pardon
pardon to cover the silent, unkind
epithet and amazed question jiving
behind (why in fuckin hell are these fuckin kids
up and out this fuckin late?) –, then leap- Both tote and heart – lagging
frogging busker ensembles complete by three beats and a bit – snag
with pullulating scores plus cello on mindless steel, and hang half-
and violin cases in fresh delta outside till Reuilly-Diderot when doors
formations, to make that one last and hope spill open to ease the grip
breathless dash into the closing on cloth and breath, which – rips
arms of Line One as it speeds and slits notwithstanding – resume
away towards Franklin D. Roosevelt roles and functions before Bastille
and a hodiernal future, metrical and its irruption of joyous, sparkling
if imperfect.
melomaniacs, all disgorged – while
no rodents of Cinderella – by midnight
from Carlos Ott’s opera. One,
as French or foreign as you, a specimen
courteous to a fault, sets to enlighten
his older companion on Ott: another
immigrant they invited to build and storm
Paris, though one with the rare sense
to leave when his job was done.

You flinch in the crossfire of their
smiles, as ire at finding a stray
target supplants the amity,
the mirth in both sets of eyes.

Karthika Naïr

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