Poetry at Sangam

Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.

My mother clicks a selfie by Nitoo Das

The Dihing is nowhere
near her face, except perhaps
as an absent blur a turned device
cannot present. A root
withdrawing into grass.

In spring, a sparrow sinks
dragging a sudden grief. Her grief
for her father, the teacher
her thick, thick plaits
her round, round arms. And now
rising darkness.

She says we have to forget
how we danced; how we loved.

And the mole distracts.
The mole that everyone compared
to Waheeda’s. It appears as noise,
an unvarying straining
to read lips, guess
meanings.

Before he died,
my father’s mind could no longer
read her body, recognise her
old shape. Here’s a second
chance at white balance. Correcting
a lack.

 
Creating a face
that has the right depth
of field. The incessant seeing
like a walk through fog, the miles
that had to be torched
to reach her school.

Here is my mother’s map:
pleats, knots, pins,
hankies, Bata sandals, Pond’s
dreamflower, toothpaste
thrice a day so that the rot inside
does not spread to the garden.

Keep this

keep

a folded bloom,
balsam (of the burst-
mode seeds), maize, a dying
rose, sometimes                            a lily, like her name.
 
And when hands are small
shattered bones beneath a dheki in her night
time stories, a fear climbs
just before I sink into sleep, shifting
and moaning.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Nitoo Das is a birder, caricaturist, and poet. Her first collection of poetry, Boki, was published in 2008, and her second, Cyborg Proverbs, was brought out by Poetrywala in September 2017. She teaches English at Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi.

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