Prayers To Lord Murugan
By K. Ramanujan
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.
