Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
Man in concerned with the iron clad relationship between word and meaning ~ NM Rashid
Cain, pronounce the death sentence
to steady your heart, why don’t you?
If you can’t confide in us, who
can you turn to? Whisper
sweet nothings to us.
Why don’t you?
By the velvet-voiced anklets worn by evening
in her blistered feet, you pronounced,
there is no night sufficient to wear down
our dreams thrice. If you dream
Abel’s insistence on the first murder,
call out to the raven to account
for the blood embroidered on the battered graves.
Why don’t you?
The morning rushed to cleave
the shadows, which bound us.
We were driven out
in a hundred neat rows, torn hands
held high over our shamed heads.
We carried nothing except extinct echoes
of our songs for the promised night.
If you are the first blood of our race,
the beginning, untie our accused end.
Why don’t you?
Return us, as the dust returns
to the resurrected graves. In our dreams
we return as ghosts to our pomegranate trees.
We hide our shame beneath their roots
hoping it will ripen into the raven
of our shame when despair concludes its feast,
and the ironclad gates of eternity
shut on the stalkers of the night.
If you are the raven of our dreams
mislead us with our cries in the rain.
Why don’t you?