Mud Houses

Mud Houses

Into the thatched huts above the canal
only my imagination is allowed to enter.

There, above the slimy hyacinths
and the crush of healthy green stalks,
up the crumbling bank of brownblack mud,
my mind bumps against pots of earth,
denting prides.

There they live, scream and curse,
milk slothful buffaloes and even
slaughter pigs sometimes,
while from between dried palmleaves
curl smoke, upwards, out into the air
like the soft sighs of grandparents.

In those lived moments,
whose pale and mottled reflections
rock unsteadily on the water's edge,
on its torpidity,
only baked mud and parched earth mater,
and jagged thatching, as safe as
the wrinkled palms of aged mothers.