Strategies of Entreatment

If you were a wise pir, 

I would press my fevered forehead

 to the cool marble of your entombed body,

If you were a Catholic saint,

 I would kiss your desert dry hands, 

as fragile and eternal as a butterfly's wing,

If you were a fiery djinn,

 I would spill my longing in a letter,

 and hang it in an envelope at Kotla,

If you were a foul demon,

 I would weave a diagram of desires

 from my blood in a graveyard at midnight.

But no, you are a God

of my own making, and just as 

aloof and unseeing as the one all humans made,

And so, before your image, 

I kneel every night, praying,

 that you too are infected with my madness; 

Or else, let that other God 

have mercy on me and turn me to stone,

 like your smiling eyes.