Naipaul said: To be a writer, that noble thing,
I felt I had to leave.
Actually to write, I had to return.

Tracing shadows, inking them real...
I know not why we go
travelling timezones

until homes are the milestones,
in the solstice and eclipse
waxing and waning, of self.

Memory as color, memory as sound;
as a tabla beat of the heart
          echoing through music in moist gymnasiums -

the conchshell sound of the evening sky
morph to honking geese
in lavender skies with an autumnal chill.

          It is all this, but not only this -
          sometimes a mongrel breed living half a life,
          sometimes pickled, sometimes preserved.

The palimpsest of exile is an afflicted volume
          pages filled with erasures,
silverfish slivering sentences, sui generis.