my husband's maternal great grandfather

Appa’s handkerchief follows him
like a mongrel. At the bazaar,
he pulls the cotton tongue
to hammock the best bananas.
Haggling price from behind
mirrored sunglasses, he’s anonymous
as a movie star.

Sandals slap the dust road home,
past rickshaws, trams and beggars
chanting Rama, Krishna, Govinda;
he steps out of the reach of the Evil Eye,
though Amma will hiss 'What to do?'
the moment his harvest spills on her table.

For years, banana leaves bleed green
through the kerchief, and Amma, cursing,
pounds out the stain on a rock by the river.
Appa’s face continues to fall, his features
slammed shut, lines in his forehead etched
as if by some god.

To snatch cloth out from under plantains
was not real magic: it bored us very soon.
On the day Appa gave up the trick,
pocketing his wrecked cloth with a touch
tender as apology, he surrendered
to a silence so deep that all our wild flailing
could not shatter it.