Poetry picks: Six poems by Indian and international poets about their lives and realities

Poets Najwan Darwish, David Herd, Sharmistha Mohanty, Mantra Mukim, Habib Tengour, and Anitha Thampi will be speaking at The Almost Island Dialogues from August 30 to September 1 at India International Centre (Annexe), New Delhi. In this intimate gathering, the writers will talk at length about craft, form, and their different cultural contexts.

I Often Dream

by Najwan Darwish, translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid

I often dream that the waves of Haifa’s sea
are dunes of blue
and that an ageless camel driver
is emerging from them,
dragging the days behind him.
He stops, for a little while, beneath my window
so I can give him everything
the Arabs have laid away with me:
the openings of unrecited poems,
and wars that never ended.
I give him all of it,
all their desperate love.

And as he’s loading these troves onto his steed
I convince him to take my life as well,
for which I’ve found no city,
and my city,
for which I’ve found no life.
And I wave to him as he cuts across the dunes of blue,
returning with his haul.

My joy is indescribable:
The Mediterranean
has become a sea of dunes.

I Recall It Was Different

(an excerpt from Walk Song)

by David Herd

I recall it was different, yes,
And those days were more than brutal
The iron, I remember,
Went in deep
Fixed
Against the sun
And where we had imagined
The future
Eclipsed
Towards the land
This was the logic
We had become

Lament

by Habib Tengour, translated from the French by Will Harris and Delaina Haslam

Out of nowhere
and everywhere this voice O

Perhaps a groan in the Dahra caves
as you cross the station platform

Trick of the repressed, image superimposed
you no longer believe in ghosts

Chained in your flesh you crawl
hundred-legged beast

Careful staging
throats poised on the razor’s edge

Intense shine of faces breached by the text

Speech postponed

Sara Cohen

by Anitha Thampi, translated from the Malayalam by AJ Thomas

(written in tune with a Jewish song in Malayalam)

Are you listening to my words,
O Compassionate, Mighty Lord?

I was born in this Cochini soil
I grew up on this Cochini soil
I listened to chaste Malayalam, and spoke it
I listened to chaste Malayalam and wrote it.

Chanting the Tehillim, the day passed and dusk fell
From the seven candles, light fell.
Life at the point of five centuries of knitting
Has become a habit.
Where, O where did you go Jacob?
When is the next Simha Torah?

The Jew Street from where the young sons left
The Jew Street from where the young daughters left,
O the pain, my Lord!
O the loneliness, my Lord!

O Compassionate, Mighty Lord,
Are you listening to my words?

Sarah Jacob Cohen was the oldest Jew living in Kochi. She died on August 30, 2019.

Bhimbetka

by Mantra Mukim

dusk hides the hand from work it leads the hand away from what is precarious objects sovereign & inviolate away from songs already built to teach the hand how to hold suffering make earth into its other the other of facing to perch in waiting not in death dusk presses the hand against the stone with a line around it tells apart touch from labour intimacy from impression hand holds more air less language retreating from the palaeolithic stone with fists closed having written nothing dusk forces the hand to abandon the day without extraction but shape emptied of content it promises the hand a word without proportion an element without repetition ongoing dusk moves as line a line without density it hides the hand from work

Wings

by Sharmistha Mohanty

The wild bird
gathers me within
his large wings
will he bring
me flight
will he return me
to my wilderness
he has resisted
the rain
he has strained
for the stars
his attention
is rugged and hard
he tells me I have
too much love
of shelter
too much love
of love