Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
I guess you could make a point
by sketching a line
slashing a surface in two
the trouble with lines is
there’s always two sides
always a feel of ‘us’ and ‘them’
always
a nagging polarity,
always
an ‘either’ ‘or’ kind of chemistry
fences tell you where not to look, they’re a stamp
of territory, you trespass if you overstep there’s
always someone turning away from barbed wires, and
someone wanting them to stay
when you draw a line between two countries, you
force them into a posture of self-conscious
nationalism, they might have a long shared history,
they may be cut out of the same fabric of soul and
soil, but you axe them with the blade of geography
and divide them into parts .. ribs, chops, tail
bone
lines close deals, terminate possibilities
there’s no getting around the notion of otherness,
there’s no way to avoid the concept of
separateness, what is in me that makes me me? What
is in you that makes you you? You are always the
other, you are all that is separate and strange.
You are not what I see when I look in the mirror
you are meant to be feared
there is a consolation in the and ness of circles,
in the elasticity of their girth, the promise of
that bump which can expand without snapping like an
infinitely considerate rubber band that goes a long
way, lasts a long time, holds many things together
in a huddle
a circle will stretch and shrink like water, mould
itself in the colour of the subject, expand or
contract its contours, negotiate its borderlands,
rewrite its geography
the expansion of circles is the added measure of
tiny blessings of tolerant nudges and tweaks, the
circle isn’t threatened if another man walks into
its sphere or walks out, it will gladly oblige, it
has nothing to lose
with circles, there’s always
the comfort of a possibility
a softening of harsh edges
their orbit is a world —
a matriarch’s embrace
← Naima Rashid