For your never named sake*
Dear child, you turned me
into a polyglot overnight.
I found myself staring
hard
at the fine print of loss
in every language
grief knows to write, and
making sense of them all
as though in a flash
I had become
preternaturally intelligent—
should I feel grateful or
wretched for this gift?
Tired of too much
knowledge,
I sought the lair of
forgetfulness
overhung with the
intoxicating smoke
of burnt hours where my
red-hot brain
tattooed with suffering,
was gripped by tongs,
and dipped in cool
nothingness:
but after a while remorse
intervened.
Now I am a kleptomaniac
pilfering what is left
of your scant memories
from mushrooming malls of
transience.
I squat for days inside
the same question: how to let go?
My nights, married to
melancholy,
contemplate adultery with
sleep.
Dear child, you never
planted your little feet
on the earth’s forehead
burning with a
fever
for which ecologists say
there is no common cure.
To moonlight you never
confided your terrors,
to the sea’s kind nature,
easily moved to an
opulence of tears,
a stranger you will
remain:
you will never hobnob
with the rain.
We never had a chance to
meet,
forge a bond that was
supposed to last,
and see it broken beyond
repair.
Now I will never get to
play
the stern patriarch
blaming you for your
incorrigible ways
and you—young prodigal—
will not have a chance to
flaunt your defiance
and bring your father to
his knees,
his flammable ego
burnt to ashes
by a love at once fierce
and forgiving.
Yet we were on either
side
of your mother’s tummy for
a while,
me knocking and knocking
with insistent whispered
greetings
to you too eager for my
voice
and kicking frantically
as though you meant
to break free of your loving
captivity
and measure out the world
with your little feet.
I imagined you wrapped up
like a surprise,
snug in her womb,
swaying to my lullaby.
Then all of a sudden, you
were still
and through the deafness
of disbelief,
I heard the word ‘bradycardia’
leap off the doctor’s lips.
Now that you are gone,
the silence of your
unheard cries
will migrate to the
interior of my ears.
My heart, which sprang to
its legs,
like a dog that is thrown
a bone,
will to its dullness
retreat.
Though I have no hope
of finding you up there
among the stars,
as far as you have lived here
will remain forever.
Your hands I never
touched will caress
the gnarled root of my
pain,
your eyes I never saw burn
like tapers in the strangling darkness.
*The title is taken from
‘the lost baby poem’ by Lucille Clifton.
Sambhu Ramachandran hails from Kayamkulam, Kerala. He is currently working as Assistant Professor of English at N.S.S. College, Pandalam. He writes both in English and Malayalam. His poems in English have appeared in Wild Court, Bombay Literary Journal, Muse India, Borderless Journal, Setu, and The Chakkar, among others.
