Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
Don’t quote me, but I swear the radio hissed:
Run for your lives. Anyway! Fast forward and
I’m being taken by the hand to Entebbe Airport.
Commercial flights are cancelled. There’s a queue
of people with the right faces but wrong surnames
and no luggage waiting for a cargo plane to London –
people I barely know, but they swear they know me
well. Smiles disguise thoughts that if spoken,
would get us, you know, arrested, or worse. Then,
somebody shouts, There’s space in the front.
Under floodlights we’re shuffled in, Noah’s Ark-style,
travelling all night, leaving the sun behind.
Only clouds show their form, when the colour
of the sky has gone, as the engines purr in a
constant exhalation. The future is speeding towards me.
A loud darkness leaks through the cabin window.
I’m listening to it, not the noise, but the rhythm.
This high above the world, in between time,
I can’t help but wonder: now that we have left
our country, who will turn out the lights?
In the terminal my ears are popping
when the immigration officer steps from his desk,
with my mother’s passport in hand and asks me,
just like you did, Tell me that story again.