Poetry
I want to hold rain / Sneha Subramanian Kanta
Image by Anway Pawar.
The way my grandmother holds two countries
(
)
charcoaled walls of night echo chamber ghosts
refugee rivers
refugee rivers
refugee rivers
what becomes of sky ( ) or the sleeve of a
nation on her batik printed saree. A bird fleets
over the pot of rice. My grandmother feeds the
bird. ( ) Soon, there are
more birds. There is enough for all birds.
She sings among wounded trees because a song
will carry through ( ) shattered windows.
What is a lullaby but a way to induce forgetting?
a way to ( ) slumber after gloaming?
These miles crave for the ( ) sky.
( ) Death
left in the rivers of bombed cities. Red-tile
railway stations with red-craters of the body.
She recounts Karachi as her sailboat. Bombay as
the harbor, a blur in the skyline, and smokeries.
Wide-leaf plants in a sesame-white porcelain vase.
Where did the rain carry from?
refugee rivers
refugee rivers
refugee rivers
Our rivers smell of cloves because they burn.
A deer climbs an upslope forest ( )
full of trellises careful not to step over them.
There is another gravity unacquainted to us.
A door opens when you cross rivers. Some
become a new country. Some become voices.
Some become forests. (
) Some become fields.
( ) Some become rivers.