Asperges me. Domine, hyssopo
et mundabor.

It is one thing, by the rosy logs
with December almost inaudible
in the poplars, to let the moving

pictures happen, as one's thumb
flips pages. And entirely another
to be hauled breakneck

after a bare-assed coolie,
his flapping sandwich boards reading:
Neither You Nor I Is Okay.

This was the season of slippery
misadventure, heart sores, wild
rides through the crowd of extras

who thronged the bombed piazzas
of the Late Night News – normally
safe, legend only, a grey décor

of faces one almost managed to hide
behind splashes of leafgreen and
coral and gilded acanthus.

At the Chinaman's scream
the chickens, bald dogs, one-legged
girls, lepers with baksheesh bowls

scattered and resettled like poplar leaves
This was my mission (noting
how decorously blue the sky

over the blistered village):
to carry through the assembled
populace the bare-teethed grin

of imperial rectitude, all things
committed in absentia for the sake
of loved ones – one of whom

now, at this reprise of yuletide,
starves herself in the madhouse
while the other bleeds in our bed.

In a flourish of sparks the rickshaw
hurtles into the fire, and numbly
I flip pages – pages glossy with gifts.