Opposing Mirrors – Delhi Poetry Slam

Opposing Mirrors

BY PROBAL MAJUMDAR

It’s that time of the year when ants get busy stocking
food, unsure on who the feet of future will fall upon.

It’s that time, when wooden doors expand from within
trying to reach to the outskirts of bitter memories.

Outside, a familiar blame game is rearing its head,
almost knocking at the door of provocation.

I recall father's lonely travel as a boy,
from one part of a broken homeland to another

carrying just a bag of cold images
and questions nobody wanted to touch.

His stories were often covered with the color
of blood, his eyes of a crimson sky, his face with

time’s torment. His smile though was a carpet
of roses over the fissured ground of history.

We grew up listening to his restrained voice,
and then to the other voices screaming outside,

voices outside the door trying to stoke,
every now and then, old fires they had never seen

that might have never been, metastasize lies,
myths, voices that never tried to fathom -

every fire has had fires before it,
every past another terrible one,

and every truth has infinite ones to deal with
between the allegations of opposing mirrors.


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