One Poem by Sambhu Ramachandran

 

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.