A Warm Day

Today the sun was shining
so my neighbor washed her nightdresses in the river—
she comes home with everything folded in a basket,
beaming, as though her life had just been
lengthened a decade. Cleanliness makes her happy—
it says you can begin again,
the old mistakes needn’t hold you back.

A good neighbor—we leave each other
to our privacies. Just now
she’s singing to herself, pinning the damp wash to the line.

Little by little, days like this
will seem normal. But winter was hard:
the nights coming early, the dawns dark
with a gray, persistent rain—months of that,
and then the snow, like silence coming from the sky,
obliterating the trees and gardens.

Today, all that’s past us.
The birds are back, chattering over seeds.
All the snow’s melted; the fruit trees are covered with downy new growth.
A few couples even walk in the meadow, promising whatever they promise.

We stand in the sun and the sun heals us.
It doesn’t rush away. It hangs above us, unmoving,
like an actor pleased with his welcome.

My neighbor’s quiet a moment,
staring at the mountain, listening to the birds.

So many garments, where did they come from?
And my neighbor’s still out there,
fixing them to the line, as though the basket would never be empty—

It’s still full, nothing is finished,
though the sun’s beginning to move lower in the sky;
remember, it isn’t summer yet, only the beginning of spring;
warmth hasn’t taken hold yet, and the cold’s returning—

She feels it, as though the last bit of linen had frozen in her hands.
She looks at her hands—how old they are. It’s not the beginning, it’s the end.
And the adults, they’re all dead now.
Only the children are left, alone, growing old.

—Louise Glück

Banalata Sen

I have walked earth’s byways

for millennia

from Ceylon’s coast

to the archipelago of Malaya,

in the night’s darkness,

moving ever.

I have been a guest

at the now hoary court

of Vimvisar

and Asoka;

in the further dark

of the city of Vidharva.

Life’s seas foamed

all around. I was weary

And my sole respite came,

when

I spent a couple of hours

with Natore’s Banalata Sen.

Her hair dark, like some long gone

Vidisha’s night,

her face like Sravasti’s delicate

handiwork

Like some mariner,

helm lost, gone astray

in far seas,

by chance discovering

the greenness

of Spice Islands—

I saw her in the dusk.

And raising eyes, like bird’s nests,

she asked: ‘Where were you

so long?’

She asked me then

Natore’s Banalata Sen.

Evening comes at all our day’s end

like the sound of dew,

The kite wipes off sunshine’s scent

from its wings.

When all the earth’s colours are spent,

in the fireflies’ brilliant hue,

completing an unfinished tale,

an old script

finds a new arrangement.

All the birds return home,

all the rivers.

All the day’s transactions end.

Just darkness remains

and sitting with me

face to face,

Banalata Sen.

—Jibanananda Das, translated from Bangla by Ron. D.K. Banerjee; from ‘Signatures One Hundred Indian Poets’ edited by K Satchidanandan; National Book Trust, India 2000

We Grew Up in Places That Are Gone

Why do we look

for sutures and siblings

in all the wrong places,

when Google gives us

6,35,00,00,000 results

for the word home?

—Jennifer Robertston, from ‘The Penguin Book of Indian Poets’ 2022, Penguin Random House.

Wonder Woman

Standing at the swell of the muddy Mississippi

after the urgent care doctor had just said, Well,

sometimes shit happens, I fell fast and hard

for New Orleans all over again. Pain pills swirled

in the purse along with a spell for later. It's taken

a while for me to admit, I am in a raging battle

with my body, a spinal column thirty-five degrees

bent, vertigo that comes and goes like a DC Comics

villain nobody can kill. Invisible pain is both

a blessing and a curse. You always look so happy,

said a stranger once as I shifted to my good side

grinning. But that day, alone on the riverbank,

brass blaring from the Steamboat Natchez,

out of the corner of my eye, I saw a girl, maybe half my age,

dressed, for no apparent reason, as Wonder Woman.

She strutted by in all her strength and glory, invincible,

eternal, and when I stood to clap (because who wouldn't have),

she bowed and posed like she knew I needed a myth —

a woman, by a river, indestructible.

–Ada Limón

To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall

If you ever woke in your dress at 4am ever 

closed your legs to someone you loved opened 

them for someone you didn't moved against 

a pillow in the dark stood miserably on a beach 

seaweed clinging to your ankles paid 

good money for a bad haircut backed away 

from a mirror that wanted to kill you bled 

into the back seat for lack of a tampon 

if you swam across a river under rain sang 

using a dildo for a microphone stayed up 

to watch the moon eat the sun entire 

ripped out the stitches in your heart 

because why not if you think nothing & 

no one can / listen I love you joy is coming

-Kim Addonizio, ‘Now We’re Getting Somewhere’ 2021 W. W. Norton

Those that will never come to my home

Those that will never come to my home

I shall go to meet.

A river in flood will never come to my home.

To meet a river, like people,

I shall go to the river, swim a little, and drown.

Dunes, rocks, a mountain, a pond, endless trees, fields

will never come to my home.

I shall search high and low

for dunes, mountains, rocks—like people.

People who work all the time,

I shall meet, not during my leisure hours,

but as if it was an important job.

This first wish of mine I’ll hold on to,

like the very last one.

—Vinod Kumar Shukla,

‘Jo Mere Ghar Kabhi Nahi Ayenge’: translated by, Dilip Chitre/Daniel Weissbort

Song

I think of your hands all those years ago
Learning to maneuver a pencil, or struggling
To fasten a coat. The hands you’d sit on in class,
The nails you chewed absently. The clumsy authority
With which they’d sail to the air when they knew
You knew the answer. I think of them lying empty
At night, of the fingers wrangling something
From your nose, or buried in the cave of your ear.
All the things they did cautiously, pointedly,
Obedient to the suddenest whim. Their shames.
How they failed. What they won’t forget year after year.
Or now. Resting on the wheel or the edge of your knee.
I am trying to decide what they feel when they wake up
And discover my body is near. Before touch.
Pushing off the ledge of the easy quiet dancing between us.

—Tracy K. Smith, from ‘Life on Mars’ published by the Graywolf Press

An Introduction

I don’t know politics but I know the names of those

in power, and can repeat them like days of week or 

names of months, beginning with Nehru. I am Indian,

brown, born in Malabar. I speak three languages, write

in two, dream in one. Don’t write in English, they said, English

is not your mother-tongue. Why not leave me alone, critics,

friends, visiting cousins, every one of you? Let me speak

in any language I like. The language I speak becomes

mine, its distortions, its queernesses all mine, mine alone.

It is half English, half Indian, funny perhaps, but it’s 

honest, it is as human as I am human, you know…

It voices my longings, my hopes, and is useful to me 

as cawing Is to crows or roaring to the lions, 

it is human speech, the speech of the mind that is here, not there, 

a mind that sees and hears and is aware. Not the deaf, 

blind speech of trees in storm or of monsoon clouds or of rain 

or the incoherent mutterings of the blazing

funeral pyre. I was child, and later they said I grew, 

for, I became tall, my limbs swelled and one or two places 

sprouted hair. When I asked for love, not knowing what else 

to ask for, he drew a youth of sixteen into his 

bedroom and shut the door, He did not beat me but my sad 

woman-body felt so beaten. The weight of my breasts 

and womb crushed me. I shrank pitifully. Then I wore a shirt 

and a black sarong, cut my hair short and ignored all of 

this womanliness. Dress in sarees, be girl or be wife, 

they cried. Be embroiderer, cook, or a quarreller 

with servants. Fit in belong, said the categorizers.

Be Amy, or be Kamala. Or, better still, be just 

Madhavikutty. It is time to choose a name, a role. 

Don’t play pretending games. Don’t play at schizophrenia 

or be a Nympho. Don’t cry embarrassingly loud when

jilted in love…Later, I met a man. Loved him. Call him

not by any name, he is every man who wants his 

woman, just as I am every woman who seeks love. 

In him the hungry haste of rivers, in me the oceans’ 

tireless waiting. Who are you, I ask each and all. The answer is, it is I.

Anywhere and everywhere I see him who calls himself I.

In this world, he is tightly packed like the sword in its sheath. 

It is I who drink a lonely drink near midnight at hotels 

of strange towns, it is I who make love and then feel shame, 

it is I who lie dying with a rattle in my throat, 

I am the sinner, I am the saint. I am both the lover 

and the beloved. I have no joys that are not yours, 

no aches which are not yours 

we share the same name, the same fate, the same crumbled dreams…

—Kamala Das, from ‘Signatures - One Hundred Indian Poets’ published by the National Book Trust, India.

Morning Poem

Every morning 

the world 

is created. 

Under the orange

sticks of the sun 

the heaped 

ashes of the night 

turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches— 

and the ponds appear 

like black cloth 

on which are painted islands

of summer lilies. 

If it is your nature 

to be happy 

you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination 

alighting everywhere. 

And if your spirit 

carries within it

the thorn 

that is heavier than lead— 

if it's all you can do 

to keep on trudging—

there is still 

somewhere deep within you 

a beast shouting that the earth 

is exactly what it wanted—

each pond with its blazing lilies 

is a prayer heard and answered 

lavishly, 

every morning,

whether or not 

you have ever dared to be happy, 

whether or not 

you have ever dared to pray.

—Mary Oliver 

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters

and the diameter of its effective

range — about seven meters.

And in it four dead and eleven wounded.

And around them in a greater circle

of pain and time are scattered

two hospitals and one cemetery.

But the young woman who was

buried where she came from

over a hundred kilometers away

enlarges the circle greatly.

And the lone man who weeps over her death

in a far corner of a distant country

includes the whole world in the circle.

And I won’t speak at all about the crying of the orphans

that reaches to the seat of God

and from there onward, making

the circle without end and without God.

— Yehuda Amichai, ‘Time’ published by Oxford University Press

Sitting Shiva

If you find the bones of a bear, sit down and stay with them.
The dead desire our company. Touch each one—scapula,
tibia, ulna—even the tiniest bones of the hind and forefeet,
the curve of every claw. Just out of sight, a thrush will sing.
Bird song is a way to speak in secret. Find comfort
in the arbutus that whitens each March on the old logging road.
Wait until dark. A full moon will rise from the bear’s skull,
showing what she thought of us. Hold the moon-skull in your lap,

stroke the cranial ridges. You may see your dead father
scaling the talus to the blueberry field where this bear ate,
mouth sated and purpled by the sweetest fruit. Your mother
will be in the room on the second floor of the house, packing
and then unpacking a box of your father’s clothes. It’s hard
to give up this life. But we must. Others are waiting behind us.

—Todd Davis

On Listening to Your Teacher Take Attendance

Breathe deep even if it means you wrinkle
your nose from the fake-lemon antiseptic

of the mopped floors and wiped-down
doorknobs. The freshly soaped necks

and armpits. Your teacher means well,
even if he butchers your name like

he has a bloody sausage casing stuck
between his teeth, handprints

on his white, sloppy apron. And when
everyone turns around to check out

your face, no need to flush red and warm.
Just picture all the eyes as if your classroom

is one big scallop with its dozens of icy blues
and you will remember that winter your family

took you to the China Sea and you sank
your face in it to gaze at baby clams and sea stars

the size of your outstretched hand. And when
all those necks start to crane, try not to forget

someone once lathered their bodies, once patted them
dry with a fluffy towel after a bath, set out their clothes

for the first day of school. Think of their pencil cases
from third grade, full of sharp pencils, a pink pearl eraser.

Think of their handheld pencil sharpener and its tiny blade.

—Aimee Nezhukumatathil, ‘Oceanic’ published by Copper Canyon Press

What is Tamara Saying with the Milk Bottle’s Nipple in her Mouth?

Only this:

Let no one harass the kitten

let none shoot down

bear-cubs in the forest

let not birch trees wither

hit by ammunition

let everybody on this earth

live as friends

let death return

the ones it has taken away

let there be no earthquake

let all aeroplanes land safely

let my father complete his poem

let all fathers become poets.

-Izet Sarajlic. (Adapted by Sitakant Mahapatra, from a translation by Marilyn Sjoberg.)

Dad Poem X

You can’t have apples with everything,
we say to our son over breakfast, but that’s
not technically true. He knows this, I suspect,
though his face reflects a certain understanding,
as if he’s willing to negotiate. Before we moved here,
I knew so little of apples, their untamed array
of shapes & names: Ginger Gold, Honeycrisp, Crisp
-in, Cortland, Cameo. Both Rome & Empire,
somehow, which feels like it must be an inside joke
between members of the committee. Fuji, Winesap. Ruby
-Frost, which could be either a miracle or a plague,
I can’t decide which. Paula Red is a Soviet secret
agent. Envy is a deadly sin. Holstein & Ambrosia
have skin like a storm on a televised map. On the ride
upstate to the orchard, I recount all the types to myself
in a private game. Select my prize in advance. Bags filled
with Liberty & Jazz will be my aims, like any good
American. Two months earlier, it is not yet my birthday.
I am in an office in Brighton. The doctor has never seen
a case quite like mine. During the tests, I make every task
a language game, even the ones with semicircles & blocks.
This part of my mind is hypercharged, he says, like a quasar,
or loving dispute. That morning, I cut a Braeburn into eighths
and cast the pieces into a small blue bowl: a handful of rowboats
swaying. At the orchard, we are stars set loose across the mind
of a boy in a field on his back, dreaming with both eyes open.
We run for hours. We gather enough apples to sate ourselves
for weeks on nothing but their cold red wealth. What marvels:
this most metaphorical of fruits, Newtonian, Edenic, pure
delight. Mighty & bright. And the orchard like a coliseum
of planets you could hold in your hand.

—Joshua Bennett, ‘The Study of Human Life’

What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade

Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen
to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,
how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took
questions on how not to feel lost in the dark.
After lunch she distributed worksheets
that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s
voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep
without feeling you had forgotten to do something else—
something important—and how to believe
the house you wake in is your home. This prompted
Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing
how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks,
and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts
are all you hear; also, that you have enough.
The English lesson was that I am
is a complete sentence.
And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation
look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions,
and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking
for whatever it was you lost, and one person
add up to something.

—Brad Aaron Modlin, ‘Everyone at This Party Has Two Names’ by Southeast Missouri State University Press

CAVED—7.8 Billion

1.
This one looks like a planet of red windmills whirring
or a field of poppies, a wild corona of a star, heart of sunflower,
this pretty thing is fanged, arsenal in Death’s stockpile,
small unseen things are perfectly precise,
Hanuman burnt the city of Lanka thus, eroding pride.
2.

The bush is bursting with red berries,
spring has slipped through the crevices breathing green on the city,
a musician plays his oud to the sky in himself,
the trees are gravestones to the forgotten dead,
the deer conglomerate driven to community,
more families staked by windows notice the heartbeat of nature.

3.
The camera has vertigo, it’s crazy arc
leering on the hoarded splendor of one family,
(what madness was this to record and pridefully share?)
lines of bottles on the kitchen cabinetry
riddled with oil of bright urine hue,
toilet roles, bounties, tissues, food cans,
a pantry full of debris for doomsday,
this raid of the innards of stores,
this back-to-basics, to Freud’s Id of fear and self-first.

4.
Where do we send our unclaimed sorrow?
The unlabeled debris of life?
The racking cough of unprocessed wounds?
There is no island to send them off, be done, be free.
Like those lines of caskets in dirt in Hart island,
where New York City is belching unclaimed bodies
its gut overflowing.

5.
The mind is like an abacus now
computing deaths on the excel sheet
of consciousness; from the Spanish flu 20-50 million,
from the Black plague 50 million, from COVID… 
what black hole continues to gorge up souls
or is it an empyrean of hopeful light,
what joust happens in the universe’s annals
between what forces, this unending play
into and out of life, where is that mighty
being who once gave the song of life
to a tremulous warrior’s heart in the middle of battle?
Each of us is a naive question as we have always been
curved like an embryo, full-stopped by death.

— Usha Akella, from ‘Singing In The Dark - a global anthology of poetry under lockdown’ published by Penguin Vintage

Panipat

My aunts sit in the courtyard,

Gossiping, shelling peas,

While around them parrots

Cackle in the neem trees.

I sit with my flute near the place

Where the well was covered up

To make a septic tank

I glide from stop to stop

Following the scale of Lalit

Though it is afternoon;

It’s mournful meditative

Mood moves into a tune

Leading me God knows where —

Into a universe

Beyond — beyond Panipat!

Well, I could have done worse

Than break my studies and come

Back home from Inglistan.

Punjab, pandits, panir

Panipat and paan,

Family, music, faces,

Food, land, everything

Drew me back, yet now

To hear the koyal sing

Brings notes of other birds,

The nightingale, the wren,

The blackbird; and my heart’s

Barometer turns down.

I think of beeches, elms,

And stare at the neem tree.

My cousin slices a mango

And offers it to me.

I choose the slice with the seed

And learn from the sweet taste,

Well-known and alien,

I must be home at last.

—Vikram Seth, ‘The Collected Poems’ Penguin Books

The Suitor

We lie back to back. Curtains

lift and fall,

like the chest of someone sleeping.

Wind moves the leaves of the box elder;

they show their light undersides,

turning all at once

like a school of fish.

Suddenly I understand that I am happy.

For months this feeling has been coming closer, stopping

for short visits, like a timid suitor.

—Jane Kenyon,

from Otherwise: New & Selected Poems, by Graywolf Press.