Poems | Priyam Goswami

Artwork: W. Jack Savage

Giving You Away

By the university space, the lovers wait;
They have made their love, have spoken.
At night when they would be gone,
The traffic lights would still be working
in this vastness of a dead silent stupor.

Over and over the sights are run –
The lovers come and go, the places stay.
Layers and layers of lives on them;
Not you; for you the universe is missed.
In you – a missed universe.
And by and by, when winter will come
We too will go away in dreamy trains

Rushing through fogs in a foetal pose,
Trying to sleep and gather some moss.
Far away in Benares, by ghats we sit,
Selling memories of your love to strangers –
giving you away in the meandering Ganges



A Death at the Ghats

There is a man who goes to the ghats at night
calling seagulls and boatmen at Narad Ghat;
he walks past the corpses at Manikarnika Ghat
never counting the boats that are waiting.

There is a man who goes to the ghats at night
calling out the seagulls who will never love him;
in the fog ahead when the world is disappearing fast,
the man will kneel and quietly drown.



A Monologue at Scindia Ghat

the fog is a stained glass painting; you want to see the world and fog makes you see at itself; it is reflective of voids. You never find people who want to see the fog. Only photographers who love burnt dead bodies. I have only love people at Scindia Ghat at 8 pm, smelling of charas and the Ganges.

suddenly when the fog comes in and I won’t see you anymore – I will not know if you have left me alone in the fog at the ghat; I will only remember how you smelled of the fog at night.

(for Gerd Baum)




The World, According to Arturo Belano

1
What Hebrew Sounds Like

Hebrew sounds like secret codes
where people dance on the streets in Mexico;
their shirts undone, the sweat glistening in the dark

2.
Laughter

the fact is contorted, disfigured
the sound comes out in fragments –
punctuated by silences in between.

the face remains disfigured for a few
more moments of disfigured expressions.