THE FOLLOWING POEM WAS SELECTED IN WINGWORD POETRY PRIZE 2023 LONGLIST.
I am in the kitchen, thinking,
waiting for the second pot of giant pasta –
conchiglioni- to boil.
I have spectacularly burnt the first lot,
absorbed as I was under autumn sun
with poets,
drawing in through my dark glass eye
non-digital India,
Corona love letters
wild feathers, bright embers,
falling upwards, as ash...
…and while the first pot of pasta burns,
I am thinking.
Sometimes your head
does not quite connect
to your body, my Mother declares
when I have given birth
to a first, still, baby.
Still weeping blood for this lost one,
I run down tunnels of European stations
dragging cases full of river stones…
You’re right. Head does not
always connect to body,
dearest Mother. Did yours?
We have been hard schooled in intellect,
made to believe that thought and word
are the highest forms of Art.
Don’t take too much notice of the physical!
Body is merely the earthly vehicle.
Do not get caught up in its intricacies.
Think instead of the Body of Work
you are here to deliver.
I muse some more, sampling titbits
somewhat shy about giving myself
completely to own verse.
After a few more hundred years
of carelessly leaving out my soul
sprawled on someone or other’s verandah
lost as a cardigan, stray dupatta,
I wonder
if there’s really
any sanctity
in meta tongue of exchange.
Words that pass between us
beneficial,
or simply prompt
to some more, eventually filling
another slim volume
ardently awaiting its turn to be bound,
held, read, fondled, discussed, gossiped over,
clean forgotten?
I stare out of the kitchen window.
Monkey fists past, on her way
to pull pears.
Better to establish
a multispecies tongue.
Animals push us further towards
the heartfelt inchoate,
each meow-bark-hiss-snarl
real and felt.
The conchiglioni is done to perfection.
Chop chop fresh green beans,
melt butter,
sprinkle on handful of
Himalayan cheese.
Decide to learn to pounce,
curl, wash, observe.
Democracy of activity will fulfil
every one of my diverse bodies,
the fleshly, astral and atman.