Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
Remember the time
when with little spades
we built sand castles
and lived in them?
We went from room to room
of the sand heap
so carefully shaped
to a blob
This make-believe mound
lived too:
with busy little palms
in the throes of riveting play
we got the first taste
of the pathos of things to come
as the spike-voiced girl in pigtails
or the freckle-faced dread
kicked in the castle
and ran.
We yelled and yammered in despair
and only mother’s womblike embrace
and father’s chiding the aggressors
made life worth living again.
Next time round
we again got busy with the sand
and made a new castle
Then we grew up
and made castles of glass
which we never wanted,
all sanded to silence.
Well-formed, architectured, so well considered
every pane put up with care.
We put up pictures on the walls
that mirrored our personalities,
the furniture spoke our language
and our visible skins filled wardrobes.
Everything reeked of our possibilities
or what someone told us was ok.
The glass spoke
The only opaque thing
in this castle was a little box
in which we kept our dreams
and in its inner sanctum
carefully locked with a tiny key,
dreams within dreams.
The box is mildewed with delusions
which escape every day
as they ooze out of its pores
People throw pebbles at my glass castle
every day
and every day it cracks.
We spend our lives
with patchwork of plastic tape
and two-tubed glue
Sometimes we replace a pane
and sometimes
take in a rose
left at the doorstep
which we put into a tall narrow-necked vase
in the centre of the room
for all to see.
We gaze at the vase
and the flower:
we show it to everyone
or wish everyone would see it.
When the flower withers,
we wait
My baby heart and soft hands
live in the basement
carved out from the earth’s womb.
Here I keep the opaque box:
in it there is a little shovel
and a fistful of sand
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