POEMS

(I)

At the End of Autumn Sitting Near the Window …

 

It is the ninth moon and already

a shiver runs down the back of the hill.

In calm solitude I latch my door,

wondering if I’ll ever see

plum blossoms again.

 

Blinking among pines the autumn stars.

Silk-spun moonlight and

silver stream hoisting stones.

Laden peasants from day’s end

bringing winterwood to the Syiem’s mansion.

 

How sad is the lot of my friend Manik,

spilling his heart

from the seven mouths of his flute,

even though he has dared to wear

the flower of the Syiem.

 

 

(II)

 Spring at Ri Bhoi

 

Winter withdraws quietly from the Ri Bhoi hill.

Like white wreaths to deck the late year’s coffin,

peach blossoms fall in spring wind.

 

Swept clean by spring wind the hills,

fog melting from the nestling hamlet and

green are the pines skirting it.

Laughing children on their way to meadows,

men and women with ploughs

before the industrious season.

 

Because life falls as petals and

death comes when least expected,

none remembers the passing of Manik Raitong and

how he planted his bamboo flute

for earth to play music in spring.

 

But cold cold is the Syiem’s heart and

spring has not visited his garden.

 

(Note: The above poems use a popular Khasi story of star-crossed lovers.  U Manik Raitong (the Wretched), an orphaned youth, had an illicit affair with the king’s (Syiem) wife. When the affair came to light, the king’s council decreed U Raitong’s death. An accomplished musician, U Raitong planted his bamboo flute in the earth before his immolation. It is believed that the bamboo flute took root.)

 

 

 

Having lost it …

 

How could I celebrate my independence

Though I’ve sewn flags on cockeyed schooldays?

Margins are superfluous in the big centre’s book

Although memory is not silent and speaks up at times.

 

Now the periphery (of which I’m also a smudged part)

Is scrawling a unique history on delusive margins,

Mischievous like a collage by brawling painters.

Once lebensraum has sunk to pogroms

The periphery can murder too

And then deal peace cards on the table

Or hoist a nation’s flag in driving rain.

On the continuum of farce

It doesn’t matter if we’re moving forward or backward

Or if a government is serving rats on its menu.

The morning passes with a prime minister orating

From the ramparts of a fort,

“Make the borders irrelevant,” he said a year ago.

It never occurred to him to disguise himself and ask

The man on the street about his unhappiness.

 

On the road outside shut down by insurgents

Aimless now in its bafflement

Trees and lamps are breathing fog and a light rain.

This day passes between surfing for news of the outside world,

Statistics of farmers committing suicide on the weaver belt

And the poor waiting for paper to translate into bread

After discovering that a law has been enacted for them

Which finds all of them culpable for shaming the nation.

And fifty years of discrimination festering in the periphery

With another anniversary of murder and disappearances.

 

I’ve been told that I live on the edge

By intellectuals who also teach me

The history and politics of far away countries.

I have to take their word on faith, being so unread.

I don’t know if I’m shallow with little inner life.

I try not to book a flat in the city of the sky

But meditate brokenly on love and its players

Although it gave me a terrible fright the other day.

I merely silenced her shame with my mouth

And remain a freeloader of passion from its web.

                                                                                   

 

 

 

January

 

A derelict train of pain and memory offloads us at January.
Something freezes birdsong at dawn and
We see only ashen arms of woodless trees. And
Even if you hum at it, January is not going to leave.

Will the bluebird ever return to the heart's forked branches?
I think of a world bereft of snow and
See giant fish beached by metal.

I only wish you would forgive me slowly
For wounding the sleeping furry animal of your thighs.
But now, only a mist and granite sadness
On a road stretched taut between us.

I think if anyone were to mention the word 'love'
Then everything will fall silently as snow.