Lesson in stillness
All morning I try to hold it —
the desperation of a fly
beating against glass,
a dog's distant bark,
the dull throb of a lorry
winding its way up the hills.
By afternoon I think I've mastered it.
Nothing the world offers me
can be as complete or as full as this.
When I step in to the light,
I have no song for the stones,
no thought for the grass.
I only want to remember
this long road,
this steady pulse,
which feels like love.
So when evening
feeds itself to night,
clearing the way
for frost or flood,
I'll still be left with this —
the bright suffocation of flowers,
the weight of the day's hours.
The River of Girls
i.m. India’s missing girls
This is not really myth or secret.
This murmur in the mouth
of the mountain where the sound
of rain is born. This surging
past pilgrim town and village well.
This coin-thin vagina
and acid stain of bone.
This doctor with his rusty tools,
this street cleaner, this mother
laying down the bloody offerings
of birth. This is not the cry
of a beginning, or a river
buried in the bowels of the earth.
This is the sound of ten million girls
singing of a time in the universe
when they were born with tigers
breathing between their thighs;
when they set out for battle
with all three eyes on fire,
their golden breasts held high
like weapons to the sky.
The poems are from Tishani Doshi's new collection of poems,Everything Begins Elsewhere(HarperCollins).
