Slug

Slug slow
Gliding across the road
Apprehensive feelers
Slugs don't really want to go.
Slug, slug
The sun has come out
Melt away slug
Slowly dying
Slowly moving
Every act of yours
Is slower and
Heavier than the snails
In their curly homes.
Slug slow.
Why are little boys
So urgent to make you go?
Sprinkling salt on you
Those nasty brats
To help you on
And sometimes
I've seen you
Squashed to a mush of gooey
Nothing
In the middle of th a road,
Mashed into pulp
By an impatient
Man about town
Stepping lightly
With his swinging
Black umbrella.


1974
Simla

Bats

Bats so black
Etched upon a
Blue black sky.
Wings like waves
Upon a page
Precocious at any age.

Wings together as in prayer
Then serrated cutting air.
And sailing in the sea of sky
Black on black
As night draws nigh.

And now the full moon bounces up
Makes a picture book of shapes
Of angled stars and angled wings
And scissored stars cut out of sight
With jagged wings and noiseless flight
The bats come streaming through the night.


Malati Shah
2009
New Delhi

Woodpecker above the Ganga

Its body was gold
Its body was dun
Its body reflected the setting sun.
The woodpecker dropped
Like a leaf from the tree
A tree full of cadmium
As autumn can be.
The blue river laughed
From the rocks far below
The tree laughed back
Hollow, hollow, hollow!



Rishikesh
September 2008
Malati Shah

Starting Out into an Invisible World

Here I am.
Starting out into an invisible world.
Alphabet in hand
and keys that open and shut.