‘There is still time before I begin to melt’: A new book of poetry explores the unreal in the world

Lamp

For now
there’s only
chopped onion frying
with cumin for company

The oil
sourced from
a local miller reminds me
of lamp oil

running out of which
sleepless scholars in
the mountains of ancient China
read by the reflected radiance
of snow

There is still time
before I begin to melt
but perhaps if I keep at it
I’ll know something unnameable
as intimately

as a pan knows soot
and find the miller
sitting by the scholars
now reading aloud
now looking up

to see if someone has
put the wok on the stove
for the new guest
from across
the Himalayas

Unending

It’s hard to know how tiny
that room must have been,
the room in which only
one man could lie down
on a night the town

was dangerously close
to being drowned in rain.
It isn’t hard to know what
a knock on the door meant.

The door opened and soon
there was only enough room
for two to sit, the rain
writing its unending story outside.

Another knock, and there were
three standing shoulder to shoulder,
faces to the wall facing the street.

The story doesn’t say anything
about a window allowing light in,
or a bulb hanging from the roof,
or a kerosene lamp fashioned
from an ink bottle with a wick
thrust through a hole in the top.

The story also doesn’t say anything
about a third knock announcing
the arrival of a fourth man.

Had there been another seeker,
we know what would’ve happened.
The first one to open the door
would’ve stepped outside,
letting the other two
sleep standing up,

letting the last guest
cross the threshold
and enter the new room
that the other two had
just built with eyes closed,

a room so wide that
the whole town slept
under its roof, the rain
writing its unending story outside.

Signs

The poets I love
bend a little
before passing through
even the tallest door

pause a moment
before uttering
even the softest word

turn back once more
before taking leave
of even a stranger

cup their palms
as if collecting first light
through the roof of a cave

smile to themselves
as if singing a lullaby
to inhabitants of childhood stories

nod to the dark
as if to companions beginning
another journey to the moon

close their eyes
as if sliding down
the skin of a hot-air balloon

Phulka

She didn’t do it to see
if her brother could keep
his promise and appear
before her the moment
she thought of him.

The night was so calm
as if the whole village
had gone to sleep
much earlier than usual,
dreaming of an age

in which unearthly light
would wash the lanes
and flood their homes
so when the dwellers
emerged they would glide

a few inches above
the ground. That night,
as always, Nanaki kneaded
wheat flour for only Nanak.
Hundreds of miles away

he smelled the phulkas
his sister was slowly circling
on the griddle while she
saw him sitting cross-legged
on the mud-plastered floor

asking for a phulka:
Just one more.
In the morning when Nanaki
emerged out of the kitchen
the whole village, they say,

saw her glide inches
above the ground.

Excerpted with permission from All We Have, Sarabjeet Garcha, Chair Poetry Books.