Hearing ‘Indus’

A half-mile from the beach,
my shadow sheets give off
the faint whiff of my own sweat.
I’m thinking of the sky outside,
insanely blue, the street a viscid ribbon
flowing inch by inch in strange
marengo waves towards the sea.
I breathe in sizzling air and sand
while the sirocco breezes up
from the Sahara plains,
wheezing soft boredom through
my half-closed shutters.
I imagine everyone has died,
the island full of dried-up bodies
lying here and there, in every corner,
red and shrivelled, human chili pods.
A Dead Can Dance-song blares out
from the neighbours’ house,
Oonnaah cootitaeh janna ennech nay…,
the ethereal female voice,
the made-up language and the
slow, syncopic drums coating
this afternoon’s reality
with dusty, immaterial desires.
Even the dog that seems to bark
in the faint distance sounds
as unreal as a ghost hound.
Yullah-ouny-eezy-wahna…
Yullah-ouny-eezy-wahna…
I am too hot to move, to think,
to feel or to remember…
I guess that’s how I should remain,
A sweating body in a rented house,
on this forgotten isle of Lotus-Eaters.
And I am sure that I for one
would not regret…

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Hearing ‘Indus’