ABSENCE
One fine morning,
I sit on the river bank.
I stand on the river bank.
I sit. And stand again.
But I do not open my hands,
For the fear of this wind.
I'm sorry if I fumble, I'm not used to this.
This is not a poem of joy,
Or exhilarating remembrance.
This is a poem of non-presence.
I see these lanes, monuments,
Crevices, just like my father told me.
He would tell me of
How he would come here,
Stroll with friends and weave stories.
He never left this city except when
His mother passed away in the village.
The world stays unaffected,
While everything inside you
Falls apart, ruptures
Like broken skin
Before it bleeds.
But you can’t
Bring it to your face
Or they will ask what happened,
And you won’t know
Where to start,
He said.
If I look ahead, I will see the clouds,
Watching over the river and me,
And a boatman throwing his net
In the green water.
But I don't look anywhere,
Instead, I hold my hands open,
And let the wind gust over me.
The wind disburdens me of my father's ashes,
And leaves me heavier than before.
CANVAS
offer me your blood
I will dab my fingers
and paint your dreams
on the canvas
Hungry for a piece of art
Hungry like a lonely wolf
in search of its prey.
the canvas enjoys
the foreplay
of the coloured fingers.
you are to me
what art is to a canvas.
THE MATCH
I gave you the match.
The stick. The kerosene.
And you light it.
Make it a torch. A mashaal*.
And you set fire to the bridge between us.
With each charred piece falling,
Our memories fall too.
The smoke blurs your apparition,
I’m burning too. Alive.
But you can’t see me.
*mashaal: a torch made by wrapping a piece of cloth on a wooden stick, pouring some flammable oil on it.
Kumar Sawan was born and brought up in Lucknow. He is a Ph.D. scholar in theDepartment of English and Modern European Languages, at Lucknow University. His works have been published in Rhetorica: A Literary Journal of Arts, Contemporary Literary Review India, SPL Journal, Literary Horizon, Creative Saplings, and the Teesta Review.
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