Two poems
by Sujit Prasad
Memory
I
I dream of trees that are to be cut down for funeral pyres. There is certainty in this anchor. Memory has more than a solitary moon doing its bidding. I imagine a forever winter when the body is wed to this grammar of fire. Memory doesn’t clot well, this strange lava of departure.
II
I have nightmares. I dream that I have read my last book. I see gods suffering in peacetime. I dream that I have woken up and there’s no music being played. I dream that despite life, I have remained the same. Perfidy and memory not only rhyme but swap meanings. I have nightmares that sleeping never ends.
III
It is time to return to love again. The journey is through the forests of memory and forgetting. You’ll know that you are near when you find the river of consonants. The bridge over the river never came to be, so keep your vowels to yourself and plunge without grief. But remember, praying requires someone on the other side.
Forgetting
I
This is the age of forgetting. We have forgotten that we arrived through a tunnel of pain into this landscape of hope. We forget that only the brightest stars become the darkest spaces. We forget that the toys that we valued most have returned to clay. We have forgotten to pray for more forgetfulness.
II
I am sitting at the platform of memory and forgetting’s junction. Shadows are cast like dogs out at play. The train has either just departed or about to arrive. Strange birds have made their nests all over. This junction services only coaches of the true story. All trains are originating and terminating from the land of never been. All faces resemble the child I never had. I sit at the platform of forgetting and memory, the junction of shadow and shadow.
III
Everyone has a small piece of time within which she is forever safe. We carry it between the skin and what it saves within, the emptiness which keeps everything together. There is this glabrous tongue which slips while trying to hold stars. The pattern of oil on monsoon puddles is all gild and memories. I ask Mayakovsky on this the wettest day of the year whether it is okay to die at 36, now that I am about there. He says it is too late — one should die before paying anything to the tax collector. I check underneath the pit of the skin, and a voice says, ‘these are the last days of memory; some day you will understand’.
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Sujit Prasad is a poet based in New Delhi, and has spent most of his early years in Patna. He is a lawyer during the day, and has worked in publishing, IT, education, and the non-profit sector. He volunteers with the Deepalaya Library and Reading Project, and has been published in both Hindi and English.