Dharwar House

1
Stout stone walls and
a slope of rising roof.
Somewhere at the top,
tiles merge their edges
to my short-sighted eyes.

Here ancient spiders
weave their tales
in a transparent web
and trap
fact and fiction like fruit flies.
-This tangled history
is beyond the reach of my broom.

2
Some tiles have cracked,
others have worn down.
They weep rain water at
every shower and turn my
bed into a soggy mess.

I sleep on the floor and
proclaim Gandhian simplicity.

3
Latter day poverty scissored the
mansion into rented fragments-
one to a clinic, the other to a
newly married couple,
the third to a bunch of college students
who wash their clothes noisily
every Sunday morning and hum
film tunes, not very softly.

4
Somewhere along the line
came a painter-genius
who paved the uneven walls
with ancestors imprisoned in
varnished wood frames.
(I don’t believe they ever smiled.)
The varnish has peeled
into a leucodermal skin.

More paintings lie face downwards.
Septic nails jut out of their hollow backs.

5
I stripped for the night
and a row of somber eyes
looked piercingly down from the walls.

Somewhere a cat mewed
and a bone dropped by a flapping bat
came clanking down
the metallic tiles and
broke the rain drenched silence.

Heart pounding,
I grabbed my book of omens.