By Namrata Talukdar
Mine is not the poetry of the Seine,
Flowing under the Mirabeau bridge
Where after every sorrow,
Joy comes back again.
The fire in my hearth has turned to ice
Long ago,
In my home by the river
As I sit counting,
In half-light, half-darkness –
Has it been ten years,
Or twenty
When last I spun a rainbow?
It has been two deaths, I remember.
Now it is midnight and the colours drown
In the black waters.
The river roars.
The yarn pass over
My old fingers in succession,
Leaving a trail of sad endings
For my fairy tales.
Who replaced my hopes with hunger
And death?
For me, time looks like the hole
In my torn sador.
A black hole in space.
There is blood and tears
In the folds of the cloth
That slowly spreads over my grave.
I spun my shroud myself.
Have you heard a weaver weep?
That is the sound of the mourning river
That flows like a crumpled sador
Of the softest eri silk.
The taat-xaal remains abandoned
At the edge of the precipice.
Mine is the poetry of the Brahmaputra
And not the Seine,
That flows under the Mirabeau bridge
Where after every sorrow,
Joy comes back again.