Arun Gaur

Garden

God came and took the hollow to be good
and created a garden.

He does this always in times of peace
(we inscribed on the rim of a high pedestal vase),
and, when the summerhouse was ready,
the sun kissed the rim of the vase
and filled the summerhouse with golden fishes.

And its five arms spread 
like those of the Pentagon
or like the arms of a star-fish.

Then the rare, broad leaves of money-plants came—~
their thick stems clung to the baked mud
like skinned and blind caterpillars
or some Moravian worm resting under yellow sand.

Oh the heat of the sun, Oh the heat of the sun!

Fountains from perforations~oozings from the
     undergrowth.
 
Didn’t you know that a colonial woman 
was placed near the fishpond,
that she broke her hand in an accident,
her hand was amputated, then replaced,
and she carried the pitcher in her other hand
after that?

That woman would always look at the child 
blowing its horn—~
all puffed up.

Drops from the rain hung from the beak of the swan
for quite some while
and dropped, one by one.

One by one.
_____

Arun Gaur lives in Panchkula (Haryana, India) and has taught British/American literature and critical theory at Mizoram Central University, Aizawl. He has authored I Stand Apart: Alienated Center in Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” His poems have appeared in Tipton, Lamport Court, The Ugly Tree, Current Accounts, Burrow, The Journal, and Poetry Monthly.