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Before anything could happen, flecks of real gold on her mouth, her eyes more convex than any others, the ground spoke, the barrier of lilacs spoke. What sang in the black tree was entirely gold. Her chair was empty. New absence is a great figure dark as the underskin of fruit. At the center of the earth it surrounds and amplifies the dead whose music never slows down. She came by car. I came by train. We embraced. It was at the foot of a hill steeply crowned with apples and a ruined fortress. Imagination did not make the world. Sweetness is the entire portion. Before anything could happen, happiness, the necessary precondition of the world, spoke and flowered over the hill. When I was in Hell on the ruined palisade, either mystery or loneliness kissed my open eyes. It felt hugely convex, seeing and immediately forgetting. By contrast, what I imagined later was nothing.

In the epilogue to The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Alex Haley recounts meeting a pensive Malcolm at the Kennedy airport, watching newly immigrated children “romping and playing” in their sudden home. “By tomorrow night,” Malcolm says to Alex, “they’ll know how to say their first English word—nigger.” Before cable television arrived in India, America was a white nation. I imagined New England snows dusting California and Miami’s beaches stretched across Appalachia. America was a papier-mâché parody patched together by a cheaply hired prop maker. Geographic accuracy was sacrificed to the interpersonal dramas of Betty and Veronica, and the American banquet was limited to the malted and fried offerings in Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe, where the Riverdale gang solved the real geopolitical problems of how to get Reggie off Moose’s back with the help of Archie’s fumbling charms. Here, class warfare came with a side of fries. There were rumors of distant family members “settling” in “North Dakota” or “Oklahoma”—names that put themselves together like Lego castles: hard-edged and jutting out with an abrupt L or a particularly pokey K. Blackness was just a rumor too. Blackness flickered in the background of photographs they sent back from these mysterious locations: here’s an uncle waving at us from a glittering Times Square (Los Angeles); here’s an aunt waving at us mid-way through the soft-focus neon breakfasts with Aunt Jemima’s maple syrup (made from maple leaves); here’s a nephew waving at us next to the poster of a red and white Michael Jordan in a quilted bedroom, his rotund brown body snuggled in tie-dye and tucked into tartan flannel sheets. Blackness was a rumor, that is, until Michael Jackson’s Bad ripped into our consciousness and suddenly, knobby-kneed pre-teens found a way to make stringy curls with coconut oil stolen from their mothers’ kitchens and started moonwalking backwards into my Social Studies classrooms, all snappy crotch and jaunty limbs. We girls rolled our eyes but we kept on watching. It wasn’t long before Jackson’s unsparing gaze, draped in slick black leather, began replacing the glowing pastel Ganeshes and Saraswatis hanging above study desks. But replacing an elephantine god’s soft paunch with lean, mean celebrity did not save us from our own ignorance of how blackness and brownness were connected through a struggle for economic self-realization and human rights. While kids in Chennai were rehearsing Michael Peters’ signature choreography for “Thriller” and pretending to be zombies—little exemplary half-dead spectacles—Union Carbide was industriously shirking responsibility for the Bhopal Tragedy, which choked thousands of Indians to death, and black mortality was spiking in violent, homicidal protest of the US DEA’s drug buys and cocaine busts. In other words, Tamilians blinked away Michael Jackson’s blackness. We kept the heat and thunder of his fat synth bass, which found its way into Ilayaraaja’s electric disco in films of the late 1980s like Vetri Vizha and Agni Natchathiram. We kept the ebullient automation of his moves, which became a muscular theme in Prabhu Deva’s blend of baggy breakdance and whimsical terukoothu folk dancing in the 1990s. But we forgot his blackness. In time, the lightning of his presence was replaced by the grey hum of CNN, Cops, Law & Order, and the dull horror of handcuffs on dark wrists. Posters yellowed, cassettes spooled out, and my moonwalking classmates found their scientific calculators and study guides again. But the rumors of racial difference in George Bush Sr.’s America continued to bloom and wilt in morose cycles in my childhood homes into the 1990s. In damp clusters, it grew like moss under rocks. Rootless, it stretched its stringy arms and held us by the ankles; it grew like mold between bathroom tiles; it spun itself fine and strong, webbing into corners where our brooms couldn’t reach. In time, the mossy rocks lined our after-dinner walks past the hibiscus bushes. In time, a grandmother slipped on the bathroom tiles and stayed in bed, fed conjee by a fatherless girl brought in from the village and the moss grew between her toes and drew her into the earth where they buried the nameless pets and tossed the chicken feathers. In time, the spiders hung so low they fell into pickle jars every time a child fished for a gooseberry or a slice of stony green mango from the brine. And from this brine, in time, we learned to believe that it existed. And as Tamilian families began drifting from the flashy monsoons of India to the June gloom of the California bay or to the sharp wet summers of the Keys, they carried the damp and stench in suitcases and buried it in hushed conversations. They made a poultice of moss and spider web and lodged it in the prayer books, hung it around the children’s necks like a talisman, and they said—as long as she doesn’t marry a black man.

We passed old farmer Boothby in the field. Rugged and straight he stood; his body steeled With stubbornness and age. We met his eyes That never flinched or turned to compromise, And “Luck,” he cried, “good luck!”—and waved an arm, Knotted and sailor-like, such as no farm In all of Maine could boast of; and away He turned again to pitch his new-cut hay... We walked on leisurely until a bend Showed him once more, now working toward the end Of one great path; wearing his eighty years Like banners lifted in a wind of cheers. Then we turned off abruptly—took the road Cutting the village, the one with the commanding View of the river. And we strode More briskly now to the long pier that showed Where the frail boats were kept at Indian Landing. In the canoe we stepped; our paddles dipped Leisurely downwards, and the slim bark slipped More on than in the water. Smoothly then We shot its nose against the rippling current, Feeling the rising river’s half-deterrent Pull on the paddle as we turned the blade To keep from swerving round; while we delayed To watch the curious wave-eaten locks; Or pass, with lazy turns, the picnic-rocks.... Blue eels flew under us, and fishes darted A thousand ways; the once broad channel shrunk. And over us the wise and noble-hearted Twilight leaned down; the sunset mists were parted,— And we, with thoughts on tiptoe, slunk Down the green, twisting alleys of the Kennebunk, Motionless in the meadows The trees, the rocks, the cows... And quiet dripped from the shadows Like rain from heavy boughs. The tree-toads started ringing Their ceaseless silver bells; A land-locked breeze came swinging Its censer of earthy smells. The river’s tiny cañon Stretched into dusky lands; Like a dark and silent companion Evening held out her hands. Hushed were the dawn’s bravados; Loud noon was a silenced cry— And quiet slipped from the shadows As stars slip out of the sky...

He waltzes into the lane ’cross the free-throw line, fakes a drive, pivots, floats from the asphalt turf in an arc of black light, and sinks two into the chains. One on one he fakes down the main, passes into the free lane and hits the chains. A sniff in the fallen air— he stuffs it through the chains riding high: “traveling” someone calls— and he laughs, stepping to a silent beat, gliding as he sinks two into the chains.

We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men. —

i will die this month. how i do not know. still there is much work to be done. i am afraid not for myself but for betty and the girls. some nights i stay awake looking out the window, a gun in my hand. i know how cruel people can be. i have known hatred and blindness. there are brothers waiting to do me harm. i will die for them. i will love them as only i can. may allah be my witness.

(For My Father) I listened to them talking, talking, That tableful of keen and clever folk, Sputtering . . . followed by a pale and balking Sort of flash whenever some one spoke; Like musty fireworks or a pointless joke, Followed by a pointless, musty laughter. Then Without a pause, the sputtering once again . . . The air was thick with epigrams and smoke; And underneath it all It seemed that furtive things began to crawl, Hissing and striking in the dark, Aiming at no particular mark, And careless whom they hurt. The petty jealousies, the smiling hates Shot forth their venom as they passed the plates, And hissed and struck again, aroused, alert; Using their feeble smartness as a screen To shield their poisonous stabbing, to divert From what was cowardly and black and mean. Then I thought of you, Your gentle soul, Your large and quiet kindness; Ready to caution and console, And, with an almost blindness To what was mean and low. Baseness you never knew; You could not think that falsehood was untrue, Nor that deceit would ever dare betray you. You even trusted treachery; and so, Guileless, what guile or evil could dismay you? You were for counsels rather than commands. Your sweetness was your strength, your strength a sweetness That drew all men, and made reluctant hands Rest long upon your shoulder. Firm, but never proud, You walked your sixty years as through a crowd Of friends who loved to feel your warmth, and who Knowing that warmth, knew you. Even the casual beholder Could see your fresh and generous completeness, Like dawn in a deep forest, growing and shining through. Such faith has soothed and armed you. It has smiled Frankly and unashamed at Death; and, like a child, Swayed half by joy and half by reticence, Walking beside its nurse, you walk with Life; Protected by your smile and an immense Security and simple confidence. Hearing the talkers talk, I thought of you . . . And it was like a great wind blowing Over confused and poisonous places. It was like sterile spaces Crowded with birds and grasses, soaked clear through With sunlight, quiet and vast and clean. And it was forests growing, And it was black things turning green. And it was laughter on a thousand faces . . . It was, like victory rising from defeat, The world made well again and strong—and sweet.

Before balance, before counting, before The record glistens and the needle slides, Grating, into the overture, there is the end Of weight, the leaning into nothing and then A caught breath, the record listens, the needle slides Over slowly, and all at once around us a woman’s voice Stretches weightless, leaning into nothing. Like a clothesline, the taut chorus: oh, hilarious Oh baby, all around us, over slowly, a woman’s voice Gathers above the pick me up, pick me up And the desperate put, put me down. First the tightrope, Then the light foot, and the taunting chorus Pick me up, pick me up. Oh, oh baby. The slippery floor shimmers and spins like a record while The light is swinging footloose on its rope Out of time. The shadows Slip, shimmering black, and spin across the floor, Then turn back and pick up again. Oh seedpod stuck for just One moment on the cattail, out of time, out of shadows, Downy cheek against a beard: oh scratches On the record, oh baby, oh measure Oh strange balance that grips us On this side of the world.

All you have to do is listen to the way a man sometimes talks to his wife at a table of people and notice how intent he is on making his point even though her lower lip is beginning to quiver, and you will know why the women in science fiction movies who inhabit a planet of their own are not pictured making a salad or reading a magazine when the men from earth arrive in their rocket, why they are always standing in a semicircle with their arms folded, their bare legs set apart, their breasts protected by hard metal disks.

He claps a hand Across the gaping hole— Or else the sight might Well inside to Melt the mind—if any Thinking spoke Were in the wheel, Or any real Fright-fragments broke Out of the gorge to Soak the breast, the meaning Might incite a stroke—best Press against it, close The clawhole, stand In stupor, petrified. The dream Be damned, the deeps defied. The hand’s to keep The scream inside.