RE-READING by Nandini Dhar

At the touch of my eyelids, the sparrow mutates

into a terracotta bird: nameless, species-less.

The sound of that mutation is a broken litany: the blueprint

of this city’s factory-chimneys collapsing all at once.

The azure dawn meagre enough to conceal

a city sculpted out of doggerels. A smoke-laden dawn

cramped enough to be concealed

in between the frame and the glass.

A conglomeration of crevices, a cacophony

of crumpled broken treaties pulverizing in between

your fingers. The brittle legends of a city

peopled by historians alone –

their anecdotes, dark as un-milked coffee.

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Poetry at Sangam