A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight.
~ Agha Shahid Ali
when, in 1992, they came
knocking at the door, I could hear
you hide her in the bedroom,
in the mirror-worked quilts—
with their white stitching
running crisscross
across the patches she’d sewn
—she had tucked you into
when you were a child
—we had all slept in them sometime—
so often that their threads were coming loose
from the corners, like the door-frame
that held it all together, fraying
with those knocks which were growing
into thunder—you were praying
for the first time
[stanza][lineate indent=3]as those unfearing[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]god-goons waved their swords[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]like benevolent gods[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]—godliness, that madman wielding[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]sharp objects at different names—[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]why did it matter that we never kissed[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]the floors of mosques with our foreheads,[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]or ever walked the right way round[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]temple courtyards;[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]we just hid in quilt-tents,[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]embroidered fortresses[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]made of thread and mirrors, deflecting[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]those words from the Gita we sold[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]to the second-hand bookstore, from[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]the Quran which we were supposed to follow,[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]but knew only to quote in intellectual[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]argument, to cry Ali’s name[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]to damn those who cried it—[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]the divine was just a convenience[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]of being articulate:[/lineate][/stanza]
if I could say it like that, I’d have traded
places, offered you your own womb,
from where I peered as you blanketed
your mother, as your father wept for being
safe, only because he had this name
he didn’t choose to take; it isn’t easy to unstitch
our names, or to drown them
in that ganga-jamni
the goons’ grandchildren now cry in slogans,
as they conceal their grandfathers’ swords
between their teeth and through their tongues,
decked up with saffron and tinsel made from certain
names and certain quilts whose stitches
gave them away;
[stanza][lineate indent=3]ganga-jamni,[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]so easily called secularism,[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]too easily put into postcards we send[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]abroad and send ourselves, so easily forgetting[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]that pieces of card and postage stamps[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]are never wide enough to hold[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]two holy rivers,[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]their waters polluted with those plastic bags,[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]rotting garlands, those ashes of the hundreds[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]who die before being scattered with their burnt-out[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]names into mingling currents that lap[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]the banks of the buried—[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]do they knock at these graves,[/lineate][/stanza]
like they will at the door? now
again, with their inked fingers
—those blots will always look like swords—
I am imagining things, as you say,
as I imagined from inside
your belly the world ringing against
the door-frame you were too swollen
to hold up with your own weight, or the days
you spent in silence watching the door
that—somehow—never fell,
or the quilt that never gave—
shall I wear it on my head?
[stanza][lineate indent=3]call it propaganda,[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]let its alphabet run in embroidered[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]calligraphy down my nose, and through[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]the veins creasing in my elbows, down[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]to the deltas of a thousand tributaries[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]caught in these inked hands[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]I hold up[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]—shall I read my fate?—[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]for when they come knocking and I,[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]un-wombed, too weak to bolt a door, or fit[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]us into the fold of a quilt,[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]how will I tell them[/lineate][/stanza]
[lineate indent=3]Hold off the earth awhile[/lineate]
~ Poorna Swami
Poorna Swami is a writer, choreographer, and dancer currently based in New York City. Originally from Bangalore, India, she is Editor-at-Large, India for Asymptote. Her poetry is forthcoming in Indiana Review.