Poem | A Kind of Anthem

The following is a poem from I’ll Have It Here, a collection of poems by Jeet Thayil. This is his first since the Sahitya Akademi Award–winning These Errors Are Correct, in 2008.

A Kind of Anthem

A nation you thought you knew,
from Ashoka to Buddha to Gandhi to Nehru
in a single decade unravels into
Muslim, Christian, Hindu,
unholy trinity of saffron, green and blue,
on a field of British white.

My girlfriend’s Chinese, my baby mama’s a Jew,
my husband’s red, white and blue.
When we’re out on the toot
in Chikmagalur, Diu and Kathmandu,
there’s no jealousy or rue.
We try to eat right.

We like our new brew.
We float past our differences and accrue
credit for the next Bardo. (Our karmic due!)
Either way, it’s true:
We’re dead if we don’t and dead if we do.
Got a light?

Jeet Thayil is the author of five novels and five collections of poetry, and is the editor of The Penguin Book of Indian Poets.