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Poetry at Sangam

SangamHouse

 










Bookstore

书店
Meaning: Bookstore
Pronunciation: shūdiàn

In Madurai,
the city of Sangam corpus,
Dad and I visit bookstores like pilgrims
—New Century, Higginbothams,
Sarvodaya and Selvi—

Always standing in front of
the same racks, turning pages
like prayer beads, till we reach
those numbers at the back,
license plates adding

to the miles between us holding
and owning them. With shaken faith,
we drink jigarthanda or sugarcane juice
under the scorching sun.

Outside Thanga Regal—once a library,
now soft porn cinema—
I buy a 1951 edition of Hutchison’s
for five rupees, a Pearl S. Buck
novel set in Peking, and an unknown
one on Bonaparte’s lost love,
for three rupees each
from the bookstore that appears
every morning at the exact

same place, like a bibliophile’s wish
or a kudukuduppai’s prophecy—
in Madurai where the poets
settled with their styluses,
to remember in song,
the longings of the landscapes—
flesh, blood, other distant beasts.

 

← Vivekanand Selvaraj