The forms lie on the table, the paperclip removed.
The animal-cycle table is unfolded.
“What’s your name?” I ask the staring boy.
The boy carefully spits on the floor, and smiles.

His grandfather puffs at his Double Happiness cigarette
And thinks of cement and lintels; he and his son
Are building a house, and forms are outside his ken
But he is polite and describes his expenditures.

The accountant’s door faces panels of green
As yet untransplanted rice. Three women pass,
Bearing the harvested rape. The old man sighs
And says, “My second brother was a pig.”

“That makes him 45 years old”; I fill the space
With a Bic pen. The boy looks at it
With wonderment at its transparency.
A picture of Lady White Snake looks down from the wall.

The abacus clicks, a chicken strays into the room.
The old man says that the Japanese burnt and killed.
The accountant mentions the Guomindang conscriptions.
The boy has heard this before and strokes his chin.

A weasel runs along the embankment of the fields
And into the standing stalks. The golden goslings
Struggle into the pond. The oxen bolt
Towards the wheat despite the woman’s curses.

And there beyond the trees the Great River flows
And flows onwards and onwards and its rippled gold
Pours itself onwards past the mulberry hills
And the investigators and investigated and the black tiles
of roofs.

from Summer Requiem by Vikram Seth

The shapes of things that are not here
Appear, disperse, and reappear:
A room, a face, a photograph,
A book, a letter or a laugh,
A turn of phrase or hand or mind,
Ungiven gifts you’ve left behind,
Each day recall themselves to me,
Altered into reality.

Things that are here and were before,
These too are altered at the core:
This pen, this bunch of keys, this chair,
The towel you used to dry your hair,
The song you sang whose words I knew
A year before I’d heard of you,
Even these hands, that felt your touch,
Though much the same, have altered much.
O gracious moon, I recall how last year

from Summer Requiem by Vikram Seth

This was a day that came and went.
I don’t know how the day was spent.
The sun rose up and reached its height.
The sun went down and it was night.
Somehow the hours that passed between
Dispersed as if they’d never been
Though I attended every one
Till both the day and I were done.

Sleepless, exhausted and perplexed,
Not knowing what is coming next,
I sense the stab of causeless fears,
The tedium of pointless tears.
Lonely, yet lacking will to find
One who could ease my limbs and mind,
I wait once more for faceless day
To blind the peaceless night away.

from Summer Requiem by Vikram Seth