Notes to a Punjabi Girl on a Poster Depicting a Hindu Goddess

(An Address to the Animate Through the Inanimate)

(Encounter)

I saw your picture today

And they told me you were a Goddess.

They may be right;

You always had a fire of the far off

Burning in your eyes.

(Description)

For you had killed two men

And neither did you cry

For such is the way of the Divine

And the silent smile of the Queen-Triumphant

Twisted on your lips

But your eyes were dark, as ever.

(Reflection)

There were other icons too,

But I came back to you.

And at each encounter your face was as empty as the time before.

(Further Description)

Your bare brown foot rested

Upon the back of the pale man

Whose face lay smothered in the dust.

The severed head of the dark man

Was raised high

In your smooth right hand,

For he too had been slain in Lovefare.

And the blood dripping from his neck

Formed a Sea of Doubt 

But it did not touch your feet.

(Further Reflection)

You have drifted past me,

As a dream drifts with the midnight.

Perhaps you’ve gone to meet your sainted grandmother,

Or your sword swinging uncles

From the northern mountains. 

(Conclusion) 

I’ll miss you—

But then I always have.

I think it’s time for me to fold up my altar

And walk on down the road.

(After Thought)

But now I wonder

How you would have looked

Tacked up on my wall;

My thin body

Stripped and 

Hazy with the heat

Worshipping your image.

But I turned my back

And have since decried all deities.

(End)