The Domain of Inbetween

It is the season

Of digging into the Earth

Sowing seeds, houses.

The seed that decides

Resides out of sight, below the Earth pondering-

What it is to bask

In the sun, to feel the breeze

The sky’s curvature

Exposed to all eyes,

The insider’s intense gaze

To be and not flinch.

No storm can uproot

Submerged formations of stone sprouting foundations.

Lightning cracks the sky

Foundation breaks surface

The plinth sets the stage

A site for healing

Rift between earth and sky

The stage is empty.

To descend with grace

Is the way of all raindrops

Till they fall on stage

Only to scatter-

What are explosions but flowers

Blossoming quickly

Will the floor recall

When dispossessed of its sky

How rains celebrate?

To ascend with grace

Is the way of all columns,

To build is to grow.

Defoliated trees

Memories of branches, leaves

Some beyond recall.

Who can tell how deep,

Columns plunge into the earth

To withstand the sky.

To be a column

Is to cultivate patience!

While staking shadows.

Beams are but columns

Dreaming branches, reaching out

To other branches.

When columns and beams

Dream together, leaving earth

Soaring as an arch-

To think is to fly

Transcending beams and columns

With stones and stillness.

Did you not wonder

With such flights into the sky

Would the stones return?

Stones in full flight freeze

Relish anti-gravity

Leaf and butterfly.

When stones taste the sky

They return home to earth

For a little while

Arches recall

Arrival and departure

In a single sweep

Tracing lips that frame

Mouth open in disbelief

At such momentum.

What can they enclose

When Walls proceed beyond plinth

To watch a tree grow.

Walls know how to wait;

Dwelling is a lingering

Waiting to return.

Trees know how to spread

Branches, branching into tongues

As so many leaves

Chanting earthian hymns

That ascend as sky descends

In consummation.

The bird that alights

Fans out its structural wings,

The feathers are still.

Like a self styled sky

Simulating horizons,

The roof reposes;

The house reconciles

Roots that clutch, wings that soar

Between earth and sky.

What is it to roof?

What can house that which houses,

That which embraces.

Resting on shadows

On wings of cantilevers

On a grounded pledge;

No gaze can trespass

Where earth and sky intersect

The roofs cutting edge;

The line of cease fire

Is the distant horizon

Where all roofs spring from.

Does the view not change

With the way arches perform

On that which is seen?

What does the arch frame-

The view within or without?

The shade or the sun?

Healing distances

Is the way of leaping stones,

Rainbows across time.

Will the dew linger

When the leaf begins to turn

And the sun returns?

To linger, to dwell

In the neighbourhood of death

Where all life takes place.

The snails epitaph

Is the form he leaves behind,

Shell is memory.

And then who can tell

Between the snail and the shell

Dweller and dwelling.

To be in that space

To be in the treasury

Of all that happened.

Sleepwalkers beware

Dwelling is all pervasive

Dweller all aware

Where to change levels

Is an act of commitment

Unleashing stairways

That defy railings.

House is never logical

Logic dwells in it.

Do not take chances

Where right angles fear to tread

Through squeezed doors and stairs.

All places take place

Or are places arrived at

When you least expect.

Angels do not dwell

-Where everything has its place

Where does the wind go?

And where do shadows?

All angles are full of them

Dreaming of nightfall.

Where do trees belong-

In blind darkness of deep soil?

With sun-blinded leaves?

Could the earth fortell,

Could the cast sky imagine

Where all paths converge

There the house presides!

The hill circumambulates,

Flowers spiral open
To a redefined sky that locates its bearings

Where the house resides.

Where does it begin?

When does it stop becoming?

Will it ever be?

The dream of the house

Is to entice the dreamer

To linger awhile

That which was within

Is no longer a secret

But an oasis.

To see is to touch

But to be touched is to see

For the very first time.

Archaeological

Glass cut and stacked in strata

Opaques to reveal

The yearning of all

That is invisible
To become visible.

What was transparent

Is as translucent as mist

That fills the valleys.

Ancient light filters

Into rooms behind glass veils

Moonlight on water.

House is the mirror

Full of everything it sees

The forest outside.

Inside the forest

You come upon a clearing

Courtyard among the trees.

Courtyard is silence.

To talk about the courtyard

Is to break the spell.

When the center recedes

Leaving its absence behind

With its own heartbeat

The house remains poised

In between two outsides

Where leaves hold their breath.

Some places become

Sites of possibilities

Where trees yearn to be.

Diagonal slashes

The rectangle into two

Triangles open.

The pathway turns to

Subterranian chambers

Underneath gardens.

Roots metamorphose

Into fertile grounds that sprout

Grass and domes of glass

Ringed with wine bottles

Intoxicated with light

Sunflowers celebrate.

Form follows fiction,

Stepping across the threshold

The sceptic believes

The visual logic

Of virtual reality

Is it as you see?

Where does the house dwell?

The domain of inbetween

Where we always are.

To blend with the earth

To stand out against the sky

To transcend seasons.

To be is to dwell

To preside and to reside

Simultaneously.

To speak of the house

Is to wipe the mouth with words

So that it may speak.

H Masud Taj

‘It took the architecture of Nari Gandhi to braid the three strands of architecture, poetry and calligraphy into “The Domain of Inbetween” and for that I remain thankful.’

And I remain thankful to you for these precious pearls of inspiring imagination!