Preeti Singh
Monsoon 2016 * Bird Poem For an year now I have tried to mould perfect sentences in an elegy for you nana. All day I hear the poem sing like a sparrow in the lemon tree standing alone in our old house. As I listen, I forget to write. Only in pieces can this poem remember you. Like raindrops and the stars and million other broken things that one preserves in tiny wooden boxes I have kept you living in a thousand unwritten poems, like nameless sparrows that return from their search on evenings such as this. * Keepsakes They brought me back years of letters I wrote to you. They brought me yellowing pages in disjointed handwriting. Childish demands of trivial artifacts-- suns and stars in the galaxy, one more story, one more book, A box of chalk, and scraps of firewood A walk in the park, a doll’s dress, the promise of protection from the dark abyss. They brought me years of poems in colourful ink, with little flowers and paper roses pasted in the margins with drips of paint in my rash hand your keepsakes from this forgotten land. |
Preeti Singh is from Lucknow. She has completed her M.Phil in English Literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and has taught in several colleges at University of Delhi. This is her first poetry publication.
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