An introduction
Write my name in soft bold letters.
The pruning of wood, in the soft cold weather.
A whiff of wind and a night's cerulean dream
Write me in the fortress of your memory.
Walk in the graveyard of footprints buried in sodden sleep.
In the fire of the heart,
Drape me.
Drape me in the velvet skin of your holiness
The Ganges water boiling and the
Mountains' blood in sweat.
Oh, mother,
name me the symphony,
in the wailing of the cow's scream,
Louder,
Louder
then the hull of satanic voices.
Oh, mother,
foster me
in the veins of your hearth
As
The old sun isn't enough to brighten our eyes,
The god isn't enough to soften the wounds in our thighs.
The colours of Holi are still fragile
To hold the caricature of our bodies
In the glory of mornings
God forbid
The witches' gossamer
Sparkling in the shade like teardrops resting on her face,
In the burning pyre of
Our burning sandalwood.
Oh, mother,
Dream.
A dream like a long walk in history,
Dream dissection
Of our voices in the youth of future
For we have written this empire in the language of our blood.
So here I introduce,
My war cry in the naked arms of the world,
So here I introduce,
The cross-section
Of millennia-old words
So here I introduce
The magma of
Silence
I introduce
The women of this world.
-sirisha