Evening on New Road: A festival of Light
New Road has been swept and is outwardly clean;
Girls come and go in the dusk,
Khichapokhari gasps for breath
Amid the smoky sidestreet houses,
Dark and malodorous,
Like armpit hairs in a sleeveless blouse.
In the shops´ display windows,
Suzy Wong smiles, a Hong Kong beauty,
Madam Nylon, Miss Terylene,
Innocent virgins, virgins with loops,
Arms bearing prints of penicillin´s advance,
Stride toward the dark alleyways.
A flower-baby hippy walks down New Road
In the arms of her prince, engrossed in a trip
Half-naked in a saffron-blouse,
Her brassiere´s baskets lift the stale fruits of youth.
Every eye in New Road is fixed on her navel;
Adopted sons around the pipal tree
Stand seceretly thinking lewd thoughts;
They sprout up from behind benches.
The filth thrown up by P.S.K. Drainage
Regards the day with jaundiced eyes,
Opening a newspaper´s pages.
A beggar woman stands by the News Centre;
She X-rays a hard-up Nepali´s pocket,
And begs for five paisa.
Then the poor man puts up a ballon of abuse.
Up into the Kathmandu sky.
He turns to the lottery stall,
Whence his fortune might come,
And finally spits on himself.
I see no point in loitering Tound here
So, to give meaning to the word "home"
(home by day, bar by night),
I make the labour of a new verse into some beer,
And I drink.
Then I pace out New Road, Plotting a poem.