A jackdaw may smile but the magician's son
will not utter a word. The dandruff of expression

has been blown from his eyes.
He never smiles and he never cries.

His father holds his thistle-thin arms shoulder-high and wide
like the wings of a dying heron on his final glide.

Every day the same routine,
the traffic of the boy's mind

halted by the father's hands, the awareness kissed
away from the face by an occult mist.

On an upthrust sword-point they make him lie supine.
Why doesn't the sword-blade enter the spine

of this senseless huddle, rigid from knee to throat?
The sword removed, he levitates, he floats

for some hypnotic moments, and dares
gravity, asleep on a hammock which isn't there.

They have to bring him back, they have to bring him back!
Anton Mesmer himself leads the attack.

Much waving of arms, intensely focused eyes!
He comes back, the mists exorcized.

Some black tide, oil-polluted, has left him on the beach,
this coastal bird, child-fish, in man's polluted reach.

He rises, walks, strains;
the drowned-bird look remains.

'Where is the fantasy here, where the mantic spell,
wand and pentacle?' I asked, 'this is no magic, hell'.

As I drove back angry over Ameera Kadal
rain broke, white magic rain from the cloud's dark spell.