Gopika Jadeja

From Remembering: A cycle of poems

It scares me –

the thought

that given half

a chance

one could love

any blind dog

that limps

into the sphere

of consciousness,

learning

to crowd it.

**

I know each fold

of your

not perfect not quite

conch shaped ear

the not-yet-

covered-with-skin holes

that sported earrings

in far away days

you like to think of as wild.

What history

would it change

if I choose

not to remember?

**

Not a poem about your absence

But of space and silence

Empty, potent

Both make love with everything

Two translations

Difference

Now

when I think of mother

my eyes don’t get clouded over

with fascination

The face does not transform

rapt, into that of a child

listening to a fairy story.

Besides,

one doesn’t need a story

for the morsel to go down the throat

anymore.

The difference is just that

before, when knees used to get scraped

Mother came to the mind.

Now when something gets scraped within

Mother comes to the mind.

Translated from the Gujarati of Esha Delawala, from the collection ‘Vartaaro’, Image Publications, 2008. Esha Delavala is a journalist. She lives and works in Surat.

Disembodied

There lies a body before me, twisted

It is the body of some animal or a bird

Or is it mine, I do not know.

Looking at the pain ridden body I think –

What would it be like – the asharira1

Which has never ever felt any pain?

Here, before me there are

Bloated sinews, twisted neck

Eyes popping out

And fractured bones

The disjoint parts of the body

Seem to be painless

The fount of pain –

Some lifeless body

Is twisting in my soul

And unconscious in my pain

I blabber

In the tongue of teeming insects

The fount of pain –

Some lifeless body

Is now taking a giant shape

I am looking for a face to that body

In the faces of my dear ones.

Translated from the Gujarati of Manisha Joshi from her collection, ‘Kansara Bazaar’, Image Publications.

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