The Taxi Poems:

Namaste

Hello bum-squat tea stalls,
sticky flies, milk-sweet vendors,
hello tailors, astrologers, cobblers,
banana sellers, samosa wallahs.

Hello Ali Opticals,
Saraswati Musicals,
Mount Kalash Dry Cleaners,
Maha Laksmi Jewellers.

Hello monkey men hanging from buses,
sideways-sitting wives on scooters,
hello thumbless lepers on pushcarts,
rickshaw pedallers defying progress.

Hello ambling cow,
elephant lumbering in chains,
boy in buffalo cart,
farmers in tractor trailer, smoking hookah,
hello dogs with visible ribs,
outside Abdullah’s Meat Shop.

Hello Bengali sex doctor,
ultra-scan abortion clinics,
hello road-work women in saris
lifting the pick-axe for the nation.

Muslim, Parsi, Jew and Christian
hello Sikh with sword and turban,
and surgical-masked Jain monk—
the saviour of bacteria.

Hello sadhu with swinging penis,
sufi singer drunk on qawwali,
dropout yogi in a cave,
hello chapatti, once a day.

Namaskar, 84 million life-forms.
You are the snakes,
You are the ladders,
evolving, devolving, revolving
from politician to vulture food,
from mud to illumination.
And yes, 330 million gods—
finite friends, still trekking to the Formless.
a pantheon greeting also to you.

Good morning black and yellow taxi,
Lord Shiva holy picture
meditating on the dash,
good morning
mustached and cunning driver
with a greedy meter,
hello you bitumen river of India,
please ferry me through
the story bazaars
laneway by cobbled laneway,
mango pip by mango pip
as minutely and epically as possible
to where ever it is
I’m destined to blow
Like a dusty handful
scumbled into the wind.

An earlier version of "Namaste" was published in the annual Friendly Street Anthology (Australia) in 1991.

Copyright 2006 by Chris Mooney-Singh