Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
Living on hyphens
a man needs to anchor himself.
Between dream and landscape
and between dream and the dark blood
congealing on cobblestones;
between hierarchy and disorder,
between the slow rhythms of seasons
and the frenetic pace of blood,
a man must arrive
at some sort of understanding.
Some people are lucky:
they function under two skies;
a sky of feeling
for each dialect of love
they instinctively possess:
and a different sky of history
over each separate past.
Between the face and the mask
that looks better than the face;
between love for the land
and hatred for the times:
between the smog one lives in
and the hope one lives on:
a man, a woman
must come to an understanding.
But happiness lies in the familiar,
in the penumbra one can sense.
Not soot from the heavens,
and the grit –encrusted air–
but yesterday’s blue space still pulsing
with yesterday’s light and radio signals.
Happy with just one sky,
one feeling—of love,
one sense—of loss,
one window—despair.
(First published in Night River)
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