By Sambhu Ramachandran
Dear child, you turned me into a polyglot overnight.
I found myself staring hard
at the fine print of loss in every language
grief knows to write, and making sense of them all
as though in a flash
I had become preternaturally intelligent—
should I feel grateful or wretched for this gift?
Tired of too much knowledge,
I sought the lair of forgetfulness
overhung with the intoxicating smoke
of burnt hours where my red-hot brain
tattooed with suffering, was gripped by tongs,
and dipped in cool nothingness:
but after a while remorse intervened.
Now I am a kleptomaniac
pilfering what is left
of your scant memories
from mushrooming malls of transience.
I squat for days inside the same question: how to let go?
My nights, married to melancholy,
contemplate adultery with sleep.
Dear child, you never planted your little feet
on the earth’s forehead
burning with a fever
for which ecologists say there is no common cure.
To moonlight you never confided your terrors,
to the sea’s kind nature,
easily moved to an opulence of tears,
a stranger you will remain:
you will never hobnob with the rain.
We never had a chance to meet,
forge a bond that was supposed to last,
and see it broken beyond repair.
Now I will never get to play
the stern patriarch
blaming you for your incorrigible ways
and you—young prodigal—
won't have a chance to flaunt your defiance
and bring your father to his knees,
his flammable ego
burnt to ashes
by a love at once fierce and forgiving.
Yet we were on either side
of your mother’s tummy for a while,
me knocking and knocking
with insistent whispered greetings
to you too eager for my voice
and kicking frantically as though you meant
to break free of your loving captivity
and measure out the world
with your little feet.
I imagined you wrapped up like a surprise,
snug in her womb,
swaying to my lullaby.
Then all of a sudden, you were still
and through the deafness of disbelief,
I heard the word ‘bradycardia’ leap off the doctor’s lips.
Now that you are gone,
the silence of your unheard cries
will migrate to the interior of my ears.
My heart, which sprang to its legs,
like a dog that is thrown a bone,
will to its dullness retreat.
Though I have no hope
of finding you up there among the stars,
as far as you have lived here will remain forever.
Your hands I never touched will caress
the gnarled root of my pain,
your eyes I never saw burn like tapers in the strangling darkness.
*The title is taken from ‘the lost baby poem’ by Lucille Clifton.