Poetry at Sangam

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

FOR THE REAL/TRUE POEM by Savita Singh

Translated by Medha Singh

She who carries the basket
of her own flesh on her crown

she who only opens toward darkness
singularly, after a good thrashing     opens
like a door

~

The way my nights are stolen
by her, falling as my own image does
all nights meander along their paths
to such limits                 losing themselves
in poetic alleyways I cannot fathom

~

or exiting into fields where the breeze just
flows, as if                           nowhere else,

abandoning all stations of torture and love
quickly, quickly

one has to see
where I still                          myself, today
where I’m planted like a banderole

~

History utters: woman never wrote
her own diegesis, suffering

She only lived out that super-sorrow.

~

Stars changing in slumber
     all the endurance of our civilities
               Sacrifice congealed as rock

~

I’ll keep my eye on those who carted
their burdens as though another’s
beaten, beaten to unveil the secret
of this dark, who bit off from my nights
So poetry made possible how and when
they return                     to their bodies

for a sincere face-off, how they calm
their spirits, those who have trembled
thus       for holy approval

~
So except the lust for the real and true
poem, there remains nothing
to harry them.

 

SAVITA SINGH

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