By A.K.Ramanujam
walking in museums of quartz
or the aisles of bookstacks
looking at their geometry
without curves
and the layers of transparency
that makes them opaque,
dwelling on the yellower vein
in the yellow amber
or touching a book that has gold
on its spine,
I think of snakes.
A basketful or ritual cobras
comes into the tame little house,
their brown-wheat glisten ringed with ripples.
They lick the room with their bodies, curves
uncurling, writing a sibilant alphabet of panic
on my floor. Mother gives them milk
in saucers. She watches them suck
and bare the black-line design
etched on the brass of the saucer.
The snakeman wreathes their writhing
around his neck
for father’s smiling
money. But I scream.
© A.K.Ramanujam
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