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| Vinita Agrawal |
What if I looked beneath the A4
sheet of your thoughts?
What if I peeled back the map of
this place,
would I find the ghost of my
homeland,
a faint watermark beneath its
streets?
If the sound of my name
mispronounced had a colour,
would it be fractured gold;
a glimmer of recognition, but never
whole?
And the taste of a word I cannot
speak,
would it be bitterroot
lodged in my throat like a stone?
The colour of the sky when I first
arrived,
its unfamiliar hue pressing down,
was it grey or just the weight of
distance?
Laughter shared without language,
surely that was translucent blue,
thin as hope, but holding?
The flea market at dawn, its chaos
and clamour,
was it just the pulse of life
beating louder than my loneliness?
My reflection in a shop window,
a face out of place, a shadow among
shadows
was it just the light of belonging
refusing to settle on me?
When I dream of home, its streets,
skies and smells,
is it just the ache of memory
fading like ink in the rain?
Beneath the surface of this foreign
soil,
would I find the roots of my own
becoming,
tangled and tender?
Would I be reaching for the sun
or just the dry bones of what I
left behind,
whispering ochre sand, ochre
sand?
Foreign Land
Something arresting the weight of
trespass
in a foreign land.
Something in the deep indigo of
twilight
or the faint blush of dawn.
Something like a horizon cradled by
memories
trembling like a prayer flag in the
wind.
Something chanting tales of forgotten
trails,
of an earth left behind, of rivers
shackled.
Something like a single thread of
prayer,
spun thin, piercing the soul.
Something tracing the last arc
of an eagle’s
flight in the homeland.
Something haloing the mountains,
softly
making silence bearable.
Vinita Agrawal has authored six books of poetry and edited two anthologies on climate change. She is the recipient of the Jayanta Mahapatra National Award for Literature 2024, the Proverse Prize Hongkong 2021, the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize 2018 and the Gayatri GaMarsh Memorial Award for Literary Excellence, USA, 2015. She co-edits the Yearbook series of Indian Poetry in English. She was former Poetry Editor with Usawa Literary Review. She is on the Advisory Board of the Tagore Literary Prize. www.vinitawords.com)
