Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
We each learn how to care for the dead
in our own way. So, too, the living.
We lean our heads back and listen
to music translated from the air
as one draws their fingers
through a loved one’s hair,
and another, unable to speak,
dedicates wine to the grass
before brushing the stone
to reveal the deep shadows
of the chisel. I am learning
how to speak with the dead now.
I think it might be something
like prayer, the way others might
talk to god within the vaulted spaces
of the body, one’s voice spoken
into the long corridors swept clean
of shadow, there by the opened windows
where the birds might one day
fly in at dawn, singing.
← Brian Turner