In Memory of a Swedish Evening/Satchi

(To Lars Lundquist)


With steady hands

you went on pouring the

ruddy autumn in my goblet.



You read your poems

bright like the maple leaves,

filling the air like a Brahms symphony,

-sipping one mouthful for each line.



I translated your birds and trees into

my birds and trees.



Nouns revealed their core.

Verbs were inert.



There was a meadow

in your coat pocket.

I called out to the Western Ghats,

as if it were a hungry sheep.



The wind was turning

the pages of an apple tree.

I inhaled my childhood.



As I looked on

you turned into a green train.

I boarded it and  whistled like the rain.

We left behind the church of  the chill.

Words rubbed against words.