Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
All summer, my class wrote
poem after poem on aging and
dying, trying to figure our grasp
on the infinite while grounded in
the repetitions of mundane life.
One of us kept writing about his
children, and of the long board games
they’d play but never finish. Another
wrote of her mother’s daily demands
for books from the library, imperious
in the way that only someone pushing
a century can be. Illness and
convalescence, breakup and grief.
Dark plumes streaming out of buildings
as they fell, and people fell out
of them. The long pall of mourning
a parent’s death, still fresh
after years and years and years.
And no matter the subject, every
poem is actual elegy— each letter,
each word a container we try
to build for what won’t stay,
for what’s no longer there.
← Luisa A Igloria