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A.K. Ramanujan - Prayers To Lord Murugan
Work rating: Low

1 

Lord of new arrivals 
lovers and rivals: 
arrive 
at once with cockfight and banner— 
dance till on this and the next three 
hills 

women`s hands and the garlands 
on the chests of men will turn like 
chariotwheels 

O where are the cockscombs and where 
the beaks glinting with new knives 
at crossroads 

when will orange banners burn 
among blue trumpet flowers and the shade 
of trees 

waiting for lightnings? 

2 

Twelve etched arrowheads 
for eyes and six unforeseen 
faces, and you were not 
embarrassed. 

Unlike other gods 
you find work 
for every face, 
and made 
eyes at only one 
woman. And your arms 
are like faces with proper 
names. 

3 

Lord of green 
growing things, give us 
a hand 

in our fight 
with the fruit fly. 
Tell us, 

will the red flower ever 
come to the branches 
of the blueprint 

city? 

4 

Lord of great changes and small 
cells: exchange our painted grey 
pottery 

for iron copper the leap of stone horses 
our yellow grass and lily seed 
for rams! 

flesh and scarlet rice for the carnivals 
on rivers O dawn of nightmare virgins 
bring us 

your white-haired witches who wear 
three colours even in sleep. 

5 

Lord of the spoor of the tigress, 
outside our town hyenas 
and civet cats live 
on the kills of leopards 
and tigers 

too weak to finish what`s begun. 
Rajahs stand in photographs 
over ninefoot silken tigresses 
that sycophants have shot. 
Sleeping under country fans 

hearts are worm cans 
turning over continually 
for the great shadows 
of fish in the open 
waters. 

We eat legends and leavings, 
remember the ivory, the apes, 
the peacocks we sent in the Bible 
to Solomon, the medicines for smallpox, 
the similes 

for muslin: wavering snakeskins, 
a cloud of steam 
Ever-rehearsing astronauts, 
we purify and return 
our urine 
to the circling body 
and burn our faeces 
for fuel to reach the moon 
through the sky behind 
the navel. 

6 

Master of red bloodstains, 
our blood is brown; 
our collars white. 

Other lives and sixty- 
four rumoured arts 
tingle, 

pins and needles 
at amputees` fingertips 
in phantom muscle 

7 

Lord of the twelve right hands 
why are we your mirror men 
with the two left hands 

capable only of casting 
reflections? Lord 
of faces, 

find us the face 
we lost early 
this morning. 

8 

Lord of headlines, 
help us read 
the small print. 

Lord of the sixth sense, 
give us back 
our five senses. 

Lord of solutions, 
teach us to dissolve 
and not to drown. 

9 

Deliver us O presence 
from proxies 
and absences 

from sanskrit and the mythologies 
of night and the several 
roundtable mornings 

of London and return 
the future to what 
it was. 

10 

Lord, return us. 
Brings us back 
to a litter 

of six new pigs in a slum 
and a sudden quarter 
of harvest 

Lord of the last-born 
give us 
birth. 

11 

Lord of lost travellers, 
find us. Hunt us 
down. 

Lord of answers, 
cure us at once 
of prayers.
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