Poetry at Sangam

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

ARCHIVAL: I by Aditi Nagrath

There is no perfect truth
                             in burying  
the daughter
I never had with you 
                             and yet I await her voice
                             crawling soil &  bone. Across
her minute limbs, 
                             ours in part-ing.
I want nothing now. 

I was never mother enough,
                             never woman: my body
                             anecdotal. Not lover,
coiled inside myself, 
                             untouched. 

Where would she have come from?
Between dusk 
                             and madness, I remember
her vivid cry, startling us
                             into waking.

You would have walked to her cradle
                             beside me, hushed her,
a   kiss to break the spell. 

In my tired voice
                             a lullaby 
                             to mark night still.

Say, that never happened.

I have to put her down 
                             some here

but the sound she makes as soon as I do

                             (that shriek of hers)
stops me,
throws me back into you:
                             without whom
                             she cannot be. 
Without whom, she won’t. 

 
 

ADITI NAGRATH

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