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Tender joy


Memories are serpentine. They cannot be trusted. What was profoundly sad then can become a tender joy now. More often, sadness lingers. One of those many images that still linger in my memory from years ago belongs to Delhi. Some construction work was going on. I was a witness. For days. The following poem came from what I saw. This poem belongs to those days when I had some sensibility to write poems. A memory. A grief. And a joy that I haven’t lost that sensibility altogether though I don’t write poetry anymore.

My Hunger is Concrete

 

I’m just a year and a half old

and am constructing this huge shopping mall.

 

Here I am sitting in the shade of a bush

by the side of the towering structure

to which my mother carries the mixture

of gravel and sand and cement

in a grating crater on her head.

 

When I’m hungry, I wail loud.

That’s when mother comes

and makes me stand on a wall,

opens her blouse,

and pops a nipple into my mouth, 

her one hand behind my back

and the other holding the crater. 

 

It’s my hunger that builds the mall.

 

PS. What brings this poem back here is the latest Indispire prompt: Is there an old grief of yours that has become a tender joy now? #GriefJoy

 

 

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