July 2024 Issue

Once in my childhood in this small town
superlative trees towered high above
covering the burning sun
spreading cool shadows;
birds chittered and quarrelled and littered,
now concrete structures loomed high above

The fever takes refuge in us.
It oversleeps to the warmness
and builds a footbridge to the alien world.
Our ancestors' spirits struggle
to get rid of the wilderness
that had thrived within their tissues.

In prayer,
language of a body
puts its mind to sleep.
The most secular of all gesticulations.
Eyes shut meditatively
cloak the body with a personal silence.
Inert to priests.

Like a double edged sword
it cut me.
Nostalgia and nightmare
shaking hands.
Tears closeted in time
and...

As we dedicate the third edition of Poetry India to Surjit Patar whom we lost a few months ago, we remember this poem of his. A poem like this could only be written by a Surjit Patar who never compromised with his sword that looked like a pen, who proved that political poetry could be gracefully lyrical

Now men will come from the shadows like rabbits.
Wind is blowing.
Cold wind grabs our ears and the edges of memory.
I remember your white fingers.
It was a sacrilege to send you back to your own shadows.

Once in my childhood in this small town
superlative trees towered high above
covering the burning sun
spreading cool shadows;
birds chittered and quarrelled and littered,
now concrete structures loomed high above

Punjab has been a difficult region.To speak in the language of this volatile region is an ordeal, a death-defying act. The poets of Punjab cannot afford to be poets alone, they have the cultural obligation to speak for its restless people in their idiom and ideology. Poetry, popularity and politics constitute

My great grandmother stopped each day
at the St Alphonsa shrine
on Brodie’s Road in Madras.
Just in case
saints were a bit like
local goddesses–

Sitting caused the death
Slouching in a flower Saurav has died because of its swaying
Because of startling bumblebees because of stealing the rainbow
In the fight for every inch in the sky Saurav has met his end
Saurav has met his end because of putting questions
Shivering on the rustling leaves at the height of darkness

In silence, grows the moon
nimbus clouds roll the sky
goldfish in the waters
silently slip
between craigs that house oysters
silently nurturing cold moons

When in an ancient Australian forest,
don’t look up,
look down instead.
Beneath your feet, below the veins, laid out in secret–
red, purple,
moss-green mushrooms.