The best poetry is
Written on tissue papers
In afternoon cafes,
Waiting for someone who will
Never come.
The best poetry is written
At crowded bus terminals
Waiting for repeated
Returns, to
Tired cities.
The best poetry is
Written at the foothills
Of silent mountains,
In the shaky hand
Of pilgrimage.
That it is written at all,
In the interstices
Of small moments
The terrible reclamation
Of fleeting thoughts.
The best poetry
Is written on the spur,
Like before the sun,
A transient character
To the deepest hope.
The best poetry is written
Of a steady river,
Its shape given by seasonal
Floods, and its softer
Tragedies.
That it is written at all,
The best poetry,
Is written in stormy cafes
The rain beating against peeling windows
On ordinary tissue paper.
The best poetry is left
Behind, is thrown away,
In forgetful moments,
Waiting for someone who will
Never come.
That it is written at all,
And not buried deep within,
The best poetry,
Is to imagine again
A brief shimmer of hope.
Written on tissue papers
In afternoon cafes,
Waiting for someone who will
Never come.
The best poetry is written
At crowded bus terminals
Waiting for repeated
Returns, to
Tired cities.
The best poetry is
Written at the foothills
Of silent mountains,
In the shaky hand
Of pilgrimage.
That it is written at all,
In the interstices
Of small moments
The terrible reclamation
Of fleeting thoughts.
The best poetry
Is written on the spur,
Like before the sun,
A transient character
To the deepest hope.
The best poetry is written
Of a steady river,
Its shape given by seasonal
Floods, and its softer
Tragedies.
That it is written at all,
The best poetry,
Is written in stormy cafes
The rain beating against peeling windows
On ordinary tissue paper.
The best poetry is left
Behind, is thrown away,
In forgetful moments,
Waiting for someone who will
Never come.
That it is written at all,
And not buried deep within,
The best poetry,
Is to imagine again
A brief shimmer of hope.
1 comment:
For you.
This City
“I cannot let my idealism die young.”
I said, and I came to you.
You, this city where the pale yellow dust
from the orange soil
mingles in my head
with a smell so familiar
I could possibly own.
I feel the strong headiness
of being in a country
where everyone looks like me.
“She’s Bengali!”
“No, Malayali!”
“Really? I thought she was Punjabi.”
I am owned
before I dare lay claim
on the tricolor flag
or the tree-lined streets
of this leftover of Lutyens.
But I cannot claim you.
The fascist orange
of khaki-clad boys,
and the neoliberal nothingness
of hollow shopping malls
and the last sighs
of this dying welfare state,
have shattered my roots --
orthodox Hindu and consumerist,
middle class and global.
The strange gods I clutched on to
in cultural assertion
in the metropole of this world’s empire,
in the fever of that ailment of the exiled –
something akin to nationalism,
have turned now into wisps of ghosts
and have floated away.
I have been cured of many things,
including the desire to return a “native”
and the brown woman’s burden
with its urgency to assert:
“South Asian women have agency.”
For New York failed to save me.
And here,I save myself.
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