Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
Like ant colonies hunting for grains of sugar
the train of people who lost their way
here there everywhere
look for grains of life,
their lives made alive with hunger.
The ashen population
is whiplashed by the westerly wind—
allergies and asthma on its wings
eczema on its skin, shortness of breath.
The city turns into a pani-piya bird crying for rain.
The scorn in the city’s prayers
cannot shake their faith.
Buzzing swarms of red parboiled rice
build honeycombs in their empty cooking pots.
Who are they, flying like specks of dust?
Their hearts flit and flutter,
they grow thirstier by the hour.
These people are here there everywhere
that the floods drifted ashore;
people’s dams on people’s rivers—
dams inseparable from floods.
What’s the use of a visa or passport
for man to meet man?
The law erects the fencing
of an illegitimate and bloody torture.
Draw me the geographical borders of hunger,
of all hungers.
Yes, all hungers.
Neil Armstrong will come darting through moonlight.
Like poets
he too had no visa to land on the moon.
NOTES
Pani-piya: The Jacobin cuckoo, a harbinger of monsoons, believed to drink only rainwater straight from the pouring skies.
Red parboiled rice: The colour and quality of rice here has sociocultural connotations, red parboiled rice being a poverty index for being consumed by the destitute population, in contrast to white rice which is for the well-to-do.
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