Dom Moraes(b. 1938)
Kanheri Caves
Over these blunted, these tormented hills,
Hawks hail and wheel, glissading 0 down the sky:gliding
It seems this green ambiguous landscape tilts
And teeters the perspective of the eye.
Only two centuries after Christ, this cliff
Was colonized by a mild antique race,
W h o left us, like a faded photograph,
Their memories that dry up in this place.
They left no ghosts. T h e rock alone endures,
Their drains and cisterns work: storms wrecked the stairs:
Blocks are fallen: sunlight cracks those floors
And fidgets in a courtyard where a pair
Of giant Buddhas smile and wait their crash;
T h e n temples, audience-halls, a lonely tomb.
I touch its side. T h e stone's worn smooth as flesh.
A stranger dangles peaceful in that womb.
W o r m he will be, if born: blink in the sun.
I'll crawl into his dark: perhaps he'll climb
Beyond the trippers to the final stone
Flat of the hillock, there to grow in Time.
Dry pubic ferns prickle the bitter sand.
Hawks in a hot concentric ecstasy
Of flight and shriek will wake his vision. And,
W h e n the clouds lift, he'll glimpse the miles-off sea.