Two
poems from Aseem Kaul's Piano Burning
followed
by a note on the author
The
Past
The
past goes away to die.
Too
proud to let you see it suffer;
ashamed of its own weakness,
of having done so little;
afraid of being in the way.
It
drags its broken body
across your doorstep,
disappears into the busy world.
That
is why
when you turn around and say:
"Whatever happened to those days?
Where did they go?"
No one will answer.
No one will know.
What
we call memory
is not the thing that left
too strong an impression,
but the moment that was too helpless
to get away.
Motel
Concerto
I. Allegro: Largo
Thin
afternoons
separate me
from a neighbor's love-making.
Chipped
plaster
memories,
a ceiling of smoke.
Grief
like a ghost breathing
the time left in my lungs.
The
tray is a map.
It tells me I have come
via Stains and Spills
to the country of Crumbs.
The
evening stands empty.
The moon is a thin crust.
The
bed disapproves.
In
vain I seek
the stain of its sympathy,
a stranger's ash.
My
body is too weak for it,
my dreams too light.
There
is always the other bed.
I choose my own loneliness tonight.
Du
Pre in my headphones –
her cello
a howling Caliban.
Every
man
with a remote
is Prospero,
the
lives of the planet
flickering
from his touch.
We
command the images
But cannot connect to them.
We
retreat
into the impersonal,
seeking calamities
we haven't lived through,
choosing solitudes
to call our own.
And
always the presence in the other room
reminds us that we are alone,
that the voices on the other side of this silence
are not for us.
We
are exiles from the idea of home,
explorers of the commonplace,
anonymous voyagers of islands of nights
with only the neon lights to steer by.
The
walls of my life
are flimsy,
and no one knocks
at my heart.
II.
Andante
Almost
sunrise.
It
costs a hundred dollars an hour
to call home from here,
but there is no charge for the stars.
And
the swimming pool sleeps
in its own arms,
dreaming of the sea.
The
day stirs.
The
horizon like a crease
in the unslept sheet
of a Nevada sky.
I
step outside,
see the parked cars
nosing the dead highway.
III.
Rondo: Allegro
Time
to go.
I
steal the register from the front desk
carry it to where
a bonfire waits in the desert,
feeding her the names of strangers
so she will not ask for mine.
Time
to go.
I
am trying to deny your absence:
Traveling
across the country
erasing all traces
of the nights I have spent without you.
Making
forgetting
my alibi.
The
only way to get back home
is never to have left it.
Time
to go.
I
am running out of memories.
I
started with a whole suitcase of them
but there is hardly a clean one left.
I stop at a laundromat in Vegas
and sit for an hour
watching the past tumble and spin
behind its glass case.
Wondering
if this is the lifetime
in which I get lucky.
Time
to go.
There
is always that moment
when you turn the key in the ignition
and wonder if the day will start.
When
you reach out of the window
and realize that you cannot change
what is behind you
by adjusting your view of it.
When
you slip regret
like a hand-brake,
ease into the day.
Time
to go.
Yes.
Time
to go away.
©
Aseem
Kaul was born in New Delhi, India in 1979.
He moved to the United States in 2004 and is currently pursuing
a PhD in Management from the Wharton School. He is the author
of one previous book, Coffee Spoons (Writers Workshop,
Calcutta) and has work forthcoming in Rattle.
