Ghazal: Identity, after 2005

Kings of yore invoked Agni to sanctify identity.
France this day adds national to ratify identity.

Le Pen rises. Nicolas rules. Refugees sail through tempests,
sell sex for signatures, defy life – to buy identity.

Madagascan. Mauritian. Muslim. On market days, or in
the metro, I don many a passer-by identity.

Whispers in hoods ghost suburban streets: “Careful: cops here can slash
both gaze and gait, crush breaths before you supply identity.”

Faith, nation, vocation and corneal tinct condense to numbers.
Digits – and biometrics – now signify identity.

Mirrors, quicksilver–tongued, tried dissecting me last night. In vain.
Distant, tap-dancing eyes alone reflect my identity.

Prefecture: in tense, twisting lines we inch from dawn to dank noon.
Shame and hope dripping on forms that grant or try identity.

Then the day it slithers home: “He shouldn’t call them scum. But, fuck!
Bad immigrants outweigh the good. They shanghai identity!”

It hadn’t been that way, love. You’d hailed PACS* yet balloted blue,
hummed Bach, wooed Rap: worn a proud, can’t-classify identity.

A museum, rules the State, for settlers from Spain to Benin:
not left nor right aligned, this time – justify identity!

Display the migrants, is the decree, that make this nation great.
Star-crossed Nijinsky I bring to rarefy identity.

Poetic justice? Your Flemish chief loathes the French, preferred you
purely Asian. Oh, go invent an SI identity!

Indo-French, poet-producer: like sofa-beds and motels.
We portmanteaux people – you gripe – stupefy identity.

Red the passport: French; pink permit: Flemish; steel: an O.C.I.**
Chromatinic I am, a walking tie-and-dye entity.

* PACS is an acronym for Pacte civile de solidarité, which can be literally translated as “civil pact of solidarity”.
It is a form of civil union in France between two adults (of the opposite or the same sex), conferring legal rights and
responsibilities to the partners. In 1999, the left-wing government, in the teeth of conservative opposition, voted it
in.

** O.C.I. Overseas Citizen of India