He swerves into underground gloom,
Silence and ill-lit nihility;
The slope drops another level
Into clandestine darkness.
They fly in and out,
Bulbous headed spirits
On fuel, like bats
Out of the dark.
Beside them sail
Raised panes sweeping
Unknown passengers
To unknown destinations.
No words flicker here
In transit.
The security guard sits alone
in his corner,
Propped up in his delible
Sky-blue shirt, ID askew,
Elbows on a tattered notebook
To log ferries across worlds.
His eyes are not used to greeting,
As he twiddles his thumbs
Beside an umbrella and
A trash can for company.
Tucked in by darkness,
Silence sleeps
In the midst of stationary cars
With time-arresting immobility,
It curls through the pools of blue
Cast by rows of CFL lights
Across sliding glass doors,
It drips in the wake of churning wheels,
Merging with the invisible humming
Of revving, breaking, simmering, warming
Engines.
The radio withers here
Like a plant without the sun,
Its garbled voice
Cackles as if plaintively,
Unable to bear the gravity
Of a man-made silence
In a man-made symmetry.
He skids to a stop,
As I plummet into reality,
He lets me out and zooms away.
The others like me
walk with fickle feet,
A sense of irrepressible urgency,
Bearing the weight of
Habit and necessity in their
Frowns and wrinkles.
On smooth granite,
We wait in silence-
For the parting of polished silver doors
To haul us to man-made heights
And points of view.
Krupa Shah 