Occupied

 

Some days your absence is less marked, and deep

is your presence all around, everywhere.

The old flamboyant tree across the street

comes into bloom. Checked cushions on the chair

still sag in spots where you'd rested your weight

as if you've not left. A pigeon coos outside

at the exact same pitch as on the days we'd played

at carrom. Not just the chair feels occupied.

We're low on stuff, whatever's in the cup

swirls hazy and bright. Something calls my name

like lightning on the sea. I instantly stop

no one's there - but the flashing sky feels the same.

Not just the chair and house feel occupied -

public roads too, whole cities and riversides.

Happy Mother's Day! - to all mothers here and elsewhere. 

Mother's Day 2021

 

মাতৃদিবসে কখনো বলিনি তোমায়

ভালোবাসি, ভালোবাসি। হয় নি প্রয়োজন

সাজানো স্তবক, আড়ম্বর।  ছোট ছোট কথায়

মাপি নি মাতৃত্বের এই অগাধ বন্ধন

প্রজন্ম প্রজন্মে গাঁথা।  পূর্ণ নিস্তব্ধতায় -

এখন আর বলার নেই উপায়, তবু মনে হয়

কিছু কথা না বলাই ভালো। সব কিছু বলবার নয়।

 

বহু কথা বলা, শোনা হলো এ জীবনে। 

ছিল যে মমতা তোমার হাতের স্পর্শে, যে আশ্রয়

তোমার আঁচলে, হঠাৎ হাসি ফোটা চোখের কোণে,

ঘুমপাড়ানি গানে সেই প্রথম ভাষা পরিচয় -

ভোরের কুয়াশার মতো ঘেরে, ছেঁড়ে কিছুক্ষণে

পড়ে থাকে নীরব  শূন্যতা। তবু মনে হয়

ও কথাটি না বলাই ভালো। সব কিছু বলবার নয়।

Automatic translation by Google,  minimally tweaked 

I never told you on Mother's Day

I love you, love you. Didn't need to

arrange stanzas/bouquets, fuss. Didn't ever measure

with tiny words this deep bond of motherhood 

carried from generation to generation. In complete silence -

now there is no way to say anything, but still  I feel 

some words are better unspoken. Everything need not be said.

Much has been said and heard in this life.

There was that compassion in the touch of your hand, that refuge

in the loose end of your sari, a sudden smile in the corner of your eye,

the first introduction to language in lullabies-

they surround me like morning mist, vanish after a while

leaving a silent emptiness. Yet it seems

those words are better left unsaid. Everything need not be spoken.

Happy Mother's Day! - to all mums who are here and those who are not.

Mother's Day 2016

The year has earmarked days, a quota for

remembrance – fathers; soldiers from the great wars

and smaller battles; women; sisters; mothers;

all manner of ties up on the calendar

for a few hours only, and nothing more.

Your shirt’s loosened, it flutters in the breeze,

billows a farewell. I’ll take the anxieties,

the heartache and the loneliness I’ll keep,

and hand you the excitement as you leave.

It’s one of many partings, nothing more.

We’ll keep it ultra-casual, you and I

cut the drama out in each of our goodbyes

I’ll never let you see my lashes, spiked

wet in disarray, dismay in my eyes.

I’ll say it with a tighter hug, nothing more.

I know you won’t look back, but if you do

I’ll be in the doorway looking straight at you;

wait till the shirt’s a speck too small to show

and its blue vanishes into a vaster blue,

then I’ll turn and watch the phone, do nothing more.

My love’s an amulet, a verse, a charm,

a silken thread against your skin, your arm,

it binds but it also leaves you free - to come

and go, stop at my threshold, but I am

defined and changed by that one thread, nothing more.

In years from now, maybe a decade hence

will you have time to make time for remembrance?

Mark out a certain day in a certain month

and call? And we’ll speak with a wistful warmth

then go back to our days, say nothing more?

A long ago friend, an EFL teacher, taught me what first language interference was.  Only in my case I don't really know how the first language is defined, and she couldn't help me identify it either. Whatever I write in, at that moment it feels like my first language, and I can spot the other standing right there windmilling its arms and trying to get in not one, but several words, maybe even whole sentences in edgeways. It doesn't make for controlled writing.  And maybe it's not even just language but a whole swathe of cultural baggage. First culture interference, more like.

I can see for myself that the above is based loosely on the principles of the ghazal, the radif motif in the repetition at each stanza-end, but the question is what am going to do about it?  Will it get better if I fiddle around with the structure? Will I be able to tweak it even if I wanted to? Write it as it comes is less of a goal and more of a compulsion, how does one begin to change that?

Last month I heard an established senior Arab poet say of a younger poet, that he writes in English but his Arabic shows, and the senior's tone was one of regret -  as if it's a loss if a non-native speaker of English writes in a language other than his mother tongue. As if it's a loss for both Arabic and for the individual.  But people are the way they are, poets are the way they are, may be poems are the way they are too, who knows? And it's probably best to leave them like that instead of prodding them into being something else.

Happy Mother's Day to all mums here, and to those who parent even though they may not be biological ones.

Love-lodestone

My love for you, my Mothers, was the stuff

of deep breaths and deep days and moving enough.

Halting words like grits on the tongue and palate;

and loose ends of your anchal mopping me up.

I sometimes think of Delhi

You too are not my mother

yet there is on my body

a second navel, a mark,

a closed, healed mouth of a scar

where the pulsing cord was severed

between us finally.

I don’t look at navels often.

I’ve travelled perhaps too far;

sometimes I spot a rampart,

an alien ringed boulevard,

the glint of foreign waters.

And I think of you then.

Of course there is no return;

no-one knows that better than me.

Each spring new flowers, new shoots;

brisk autumns of foreign fruit.

But somewhere a jamun tree

still dances in its crushed-fruit skirt.

Mother's Day is being celebrated here in Egypt today. Yasmin deshe yadachar. I am greatly fortunate in that I have more than one mother. Remembering and honouring all the women who grew me up and the places they grew me up in. Happy Mother's Day!