How do poets write only of important things?
Could I? Of men touching me with hands of sawdust and grease
you know the feeling;
of Syria, Lebanon, groves of blood and olives,
magenta streeted towns emptied of bodies
(and the bodies left are empty)
erupted architecture and
mourned empires soon to be forgotten.
I have banished the thought of their pets.
Shall I write of disease and all those
incurable things that one half of the world
believes could never happen to them.
What does one say about the ripe fanatics
surrounding us, so close now
we could even tango, we could
stick our tongues out and lick
the poison off the hairy ears of these
folk who wield their crafty tool tyranny.
Shall I waste ink on the zombie electorate
corpus of hate, serving the company of
outliers to the olden systems of love.
How men with beards are more likely
to disappear here even as these mega prized cities
slip violently to sea, a little more each year.
Let me write of the thing that stays
let me write of the unimportant moon.
Published with permission from “Where Stories Gather”, HarperCollins India, 2021.
This selection is curated by Yamini Krishnan.