Two India Poems

Llyn Clague

Prologue

Beep! Beep-beep! Bee-bee-beeeeeep!

Pizzicata tinkle of a bicycle bell, 2-tone blare of a large car, 4-tone 5-step DOWN-down-down-down-UP scream of a sleek white tourist bus, bass bellow of a heavy truck.

Screech bleat scream honk blare bellow –motorbike, moped, tuk-tuk*, city bus, limousine, big sedan, little sedan, tiny sedan, pick-up, bigger truck, ten-ton truck, determined, purposeful, full of will –the scream of self.

Make way!

Look out for me! Me! Me! Me! Let me in move over! Move-move-move!

Music of the road, cacophonic, atonal –discordant, insistent, repetitive, clashing, grating, fractured, like shattered glass.

The fight for place. The urge of self. The will to live.

* 3-wheel motorized rickshaw

The First Day

Everything is so new, look, look!

Images tumble past –confetti in a kaleidoscope!

Hour after hour as we ride out of Delhi, through the thick bus glass –

Dad, Mom, tyke on a motorbike –a pair of men or a couple, two-on-a-bike –

3-wheelers with flat board beds and no sides, one empty, another with chickens in cages –

Jeep, 12 to 15 bodies in and on top, 6 on the roof alone –

Pale blue tuk-tuk, bright yellow stripe –

A red STOP! triangle . . . atop a truck cab –

The trucks! Pick-up to ten-ton, ancient to modern –everything is so new –I am filled with wonder –at a load high above the cab, another wider than the body, a third orange like a turban!

And trash . Appalling piles .

Strewn everywhere . Down each gully, in open drains, on any empty ground .