Careful, as with eggs

When a poem is about to be, keep your hands ready. It might have words, but sometimes instead it has sounds, flashes of light and color, pressure like an April gale, a lift of wing.

I always thought it strange that such fragile things as bird eggs are laid high in tree boughs. There’s that terrible risk and potential. Just like a poem.

---

On a stone mountainside, where a peahen’s egg
rolling in the midday sun is the plaything of a midnight-faced langur,
look for the divine love of your man who, even after gazing
into your tear-soaked face streaked with kohl, 
left you behind, 
but only if your mind
can roll away from thoughts of him, whole, uncracked.

--Kuruntokai, verse 38, by Kapilar
translated by A. Anupama

---

If you want to make… egg curry