GAZA – I
I have lost it, this poem.
Can’t recall its name.
Not sure where
it was sighted last,
behind that old ledger or
at the back of my head,
before it suddenly fled.
No point tracing it under
an editor’s worried gaze
or a textbook’s sanitised page.
I had heard a low, rueful bleat
in the muzzled call of muezzin
in a city where three rivers meet.
I had seen, I guess,
trapped in the rubble somewhere
in the city of god
a pair of rheumy eyes, a stony stare.
When the cloud of dust settles
in the safe zone of hearts,
struck by a hate bomb,
deadlier than an MK-84,
if you find it lying curled up
in a corner like WCNSF
its breath bated,
limbs amputated,
and, on reading it face,
break out in cold sweat,
I’ll be happy,
Though lost, the poem is not dead,
a poor mother’s only solace.
*
GAZA – II
The drill for
reading a poem
is to close eyes and etch
on the curtain of dark
letters your daughter’s tender finger
traces on your back
of desire
ice cream
of feeling
sad.
The drill for
writing a poem
is to sneak it
at the back of the readers’ mind
like graffiti on a public wall
that they don’t like,
that reads
stop genocide.
This poem I write
on america’s back
is called
amalek.
It runs its middle finger through
the dark juice in which europe stews
and traces in free hand
the banned word
jew.
This poem, you smart aleck,
written on a waste paper’s back
is not a poem beware
to be read.
It’s
a leaflet,
a self-replicating pest
to be dropped like a bomb
on this hunched planet
sitting still turning its back
to inscribe in bold
on sea and fire, on air,
on sky and land
on five elements and
intellect,
to be fair,
the poem
it often forgets.
Hemang Ashwinkumar is a bilingual poet, translator, editor and cultural critic based out of Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
