Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
History is a little girl here
who documents people’s hearts in her flower songs
that glow alongside old cots
their chests open
to the moonless, dark, starlit sky
silent, broken into boxes of chipped poems;
Lord Buddha still grows there in several Bo Trees
whose eyes peep from cement cracks, ancient balconies
and rusted cauldrons in King Asoka’s Maurya Ghat
with timber guarding the fragile bricks, the red confined in the walls
its blaze safe in the shelter of Milky Way.
The silver belt drops a few stars
on madhumalti flowers, the tender vine
creeps on silhouettes whom the moon has forsaken
they sit with dogs near the empty mosques
cooling their heels on stairs of green marble.
They rip open the shrunken maps
where Phalgu river silently takes Sita’s curse
and Hind in its ocean-sleep tosses this town
of peepul trees, sesame sweets and Ahilya’s temples
in a corner like a paper-ball
s-wept from monks’ caves
Yellow windows from dark houses
flicker with last Diwali’s clay-lamps
blow prayers on babies faces
that glow like fireflies above the rain-puddles
and ask the silent wind
to shake the charpoys, the paddy fields, the wood apples
squeeze the glitter from stars,
summon Nalanda’s mandarins, Samudragupta, Lord Mahavira
to Vishnupad Temple
and rewrite the old epics
the world has wiped from its memory.
Let the maps bloom with green rice shoots, sandalwood
on forsaken bath areas haunted by jinns
and let an old fakir break into his songs
who has been standing on the blank paper of the moon for eons
for someone to come
and rewrite this town.
[Excerpted from ‘Sin of Semantics’]
← Saima Afreen