Witness: A Poem

These days I force myself to watch 

each and every horror

falling on you with an ugly precision

from the sky.

I watch your farms burn,

your children die,

your schools, tents, hospitals,

memories, and love being blown apart.

I force myself to listen to

the wails of men and women,

the flutter of the dying light

in the eyes of the survivors.

I don't squint when I see

them dig out mutilated bodies

from the debris,

or run with blood-soaked sacks

carrying dismembered people, still breathing.

I raise the volume 

even when the bare-faced war-leaders 

come on, justifying massacres, 

giving their sins a different name.

It’s wedding season in my country now.

So, yes, I watch with wide open eyes

the grotesque colours

of peethi, panetar, and kumkum

fill my screen.

No, I do not swipe up and select 

scenes, shades, songs....

I watch until the glass screen

that separates me from you cracks, 

until my silence is wounded,

guilty and ashamed.

But I refuse to write. 

I know the treachery of poetry

the way it folds and unfolds truth

between the layers of its textured fabric,

the way its patterns excite and distract,

the way it sings, paints, and embroiders

my shame and your pain, 

the way it conjures up beauty 

from the most heinous spaces.

Forgive me,

for I shall not write

about this barbaric time in poetry.

Pratishtha Pandya is senior editor at the People's Archive of Rural India (PARI).

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