Poetry at Sangam

SangamHouse

 










A Poem for Mother by Robin S Ngangom

(after Salvatore Quasimodo) 

 
Palem Apokpi, mother who gave birth to me,

to be a man how I hated leaving home

ten years ago. Now these hills

have grown on me.

But I’m still your painfully shy son

with a ravenous appetite,

the boy who lost many teeth after

emptying your larder. And

I am also your dreamy-eyed lad

who gave you difficult times

during his schooldays, romancing

every girl he wanted, even

when he still wore half-pants.
 
 
You told your children that

money and time do not grow on trees, and

I could never learn to keep up with them.

It isn’t that I’ve forgotten

what you’ve come to mean to me

though I abandoned much and left

so little of myself for others

to remember me.
 
 
I know how you work your fingers to the bone

as all mothers do, for unmarried sons,

ageing husband and liberated daughters-in-law.

Worried about us, for a long time

your lips couldn’t burgeon in a smile,

lines have furrowed your face and

first signs of snow are on your hair.
 
 
Today, as on every day you must have risen

with temple bells before cockcrow, swept

the floors and after the sacred bath

cooked for the remainder of us. I can see you

returning every dusk from the bazaar,

your head laden with baskets.

  
Must you end toiling forever?
 
 
I’m sorry Palem.

I’ve inherited nothing

of your stable ways or culinary skills.

Forgive me, for all your dreams

of peace during your remnant days

I turned out to be a small man

with small dreams, living a small life.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Robin S Ngangom (b.1959) a bilingual poet and translator who writes in English and Manipuri, was born in Imphal (the “forgotten theatre” of World War II), Manipur. He studied literature in Shillong’s St.Edmund’s College and the North-Eastern Hill University, where he currently teaches. His three books of poetry are Words and the Silence, Time’s Crossroads, and The Desire of Roots. His poems have appeared in magazines and journals like The New Statesman, Verse, The Literary Review, Planet: The Welsh Internationalist, Kunapipi, Kavya Bharati, and Chandrabhaga. Anthology appearances include An Anthology of New Indian English Poetry (Rupa), Khasia in Gwalia (Alun Books, Wales), Confronting Love (Penguin India), Where the Sun Rises When Shadows Fall: The North-East (OUP), The Other Side of Terror: An Anthology of Writings on Terrorism in South Asia (OUP), These My Words: The Penguin Book of Indian Poetry (Penguin India), and The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry (HarperCollins India). He co-edited Dancing Earth: An Anthology of Poetry from the Northeast (Penguin India). Recipient of the Udaya Bharati National award for Poetry and the Katha Translation prize, Ngangom says that he is a “historically forgotten, politically-overlooked poet from the nook of a third world country who believes that poetry cannot do without love”.