This is a poem written by an American while he was in Dehli for three months. He read it out at the exhibition last Wednesday and I asked him for a copy as I thought it captured some of the essence of Dehli.

FIRST CITY

Here a rainbow is god’s moustache, clothespinned to

eternity. Here above this city

bereft of silence, above its maze

of lanes and language, fragrant harshingar and migratory birds

swirl in sunkissed lemon golds. Here

Siva is God but Indra is god, Durga is Goddess

but Ganga is goddess.

Here gods can see beyond their own cacophonies of honking.

I wonder how to measure time here, how

to measure space. I wonder

what would dull my non-stop trance

and if, in my unconscious, I’ve mistaken

my foot

for the ear of a deer.

Because I am obscure here, a mass translation

lost in an ocean of milk, looking for a puppy that’s hiding in this city

whose past

leaps out in every chewed up step.

Because I’m just some powerless graffiti

that can afford to be poetic among

vermilion-stained rocks

and the unfinished business of carbon monoxide, among the gilt domes

and latticework screens

whose rainbows

I try to catch between my fingertips

and fail. But that’s the joy

of A to C and getting lost

in P, T and even B.

That’s the joy the British used as evidence against the rebel government.

Which joy ferments, which joy gallops, which joy transcends the need for

food, water, air, and speech.

But here life is also palpable, like a rainbow

bridge flirting with collapse, or the yawning void

where ghosts live in the pure gibberish of dust,

here, where paradise

cannot enter.