Solace

 

With cognition as its mahout,

the mind, in its bone howdah,

 

wishes the body would call it

honourable sahib, but the body

 

has another name in mind not

befitting mixed company and

 

waits till its flyweight rider

has fallen asleep to pictures

 

of itself in emperor’s clothes

before body, in its own form

 

of dreaming, imagines racing

naked under a crescent moon

 

with another kindred spirit,

freed from similar bondage,

 

who completes it, delights it,

doubles its sense of itself as

 

sumptuous in its pachyderm

heaviness under streetlamps,

 

till it can almost forget how

kicked into line it is by day.