This poem also appeared in Fulcrum 2. The long lines may be mauled a
bit on email; keep in mind there are no lines with only one or two
words, those words would be part of the previous line.
--V.
PROMISE OF AN AIRPORT
Aeroplanes through the wide screen of the departure lounge
loll like big game on the tarmac, snouts improbably curved, nibs
surprisingly sharp, wings like boats. I think of the word jumbo,
how easy in the mouth of a child. Taillights flicker
to the torso's lumber, the sky a river that means the other shore
tangible. So clear, so featureless, so impossible to see concretely.
It's a birdless sky, it's a matter of waiting until afternoon no longer
is. The smoothness of the departure lounge, all surface, all shine. Families
and businessmen, coiled in sleep. The duty free store that needs
to glitter to survive—whisky, chocolates, cigarettes—their particular
version of the universal; the cleaners in their uniforms' camouflage,
silhouetted
in bathrooms. Unidentified smoke, spiralling distance. One plane climbs
towards it with its wheels tucking in. A child offers me a bitten
cucumber sandwich as a joke, then skids away. Eternal day.
I'm listening to Abdullah Ibrahim's African Space Program and
on the cover a snaking dirt road, receding black-grey landscape,
single human figure. How terrible to think the city of the future
will never arrive. Further, past the floodlit horizon, the country swallows
the airport, makes a village of it with its bareness, the missing letters
of its welcome sign, its guardhouse, its general store.
--Vivek Narayanan
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