The way grandmothers go out

I remember her at every wedding, birth, death,

ritually marked with gold, and sandal and tact,

and earthen pots of water, grasses woven into pallets

the warmth of fire and the staunchness of faith;

just a made-up memory, a figment, nothing exact

for I wasn’t present, young and raw then, in any of it.

I heard it later, from the ones who were there

how composed she was in that dimly lit

room, on the shabby death-bed, sounds of gully-cricket

played by slum children hung like flies in the air.

All her offspring around her, but her eldest;

they sat weeping, silent.  The eldest beyond the wires,

the ken of postal men and Morse codes, the rest

had gathered. She made her last bequests -

this brooch to my grandkid. As per her last desires

I hold it now, it has my grandfather’s likeness

a romantic token he told me later; and I their last witness.