Dehi (Soul)

Photo: Barbie Robinson

how many lives have you yearned

serene and searing

how many lives have I fled

your fanged beauty

numbing myself with the world

while you scalded my skin

in those snatched solitudes when

I could just bear to endure

your abysmal beauty

there is always infinity between us

until there isn’t

and I suddenly die

into the furnace of your hiss

how can you expect me to stay

when you obliterate my world

so carefully acquired through sacrifice

of exactly what you promise:

Me

you are venom and veneration

my Dehi my beloved

I have learnt nothing

of the dance that returns me to you

my Dehi my beloved

Me

addicted to comfort’s venal sedation

to escape you

my alibi for this life

you are the bird’s shadow

that flits across my courtyard

you are the anguish behind my eyes

the swelling rage in my throat

the nightly clenching of my jaws

and all the many wasted evenings

of manic revelry

cannot wash the blood-henna stains

of your poetry on my skin

-Padma Menon

Dehi is one of the Sanskrit words for soul or spirit. I like this word because it suggests soul is enmeshed with deha, or Body. To me dehi denotes soul as something intrinsic to Body, as being of Body and inseparable from experience of Body.