IN MY OTHER LIFE I SWAN
by Sampurna Chattarji
Arterial highway
clogged with cars
across grey water
khaki uniforms
lay barriers
The road will be
widened one day
high above the
green water pipeline
the local rushes
through the sky
obscured by haste
obscuring a pale
view of hills
that once belonged
to the leopards
of this land
—
Let me show you
the riverbank
watching us from the
wasteground
heavily coloured
the glare
a burden
east of the city
curving downwards
instead of up
No desire to return
into the glare
black wires
the reappearance of
the large white car
—
If you don’t know mushrooms
don’t go picking them
Holy basil barbeque sauce
so temptingly green
you lick it off your palm
There is no pearl in this
oyster one fraternal twin
smiles the other frowns
Which illness will she consume first?
Beware of chain snatchers
the stone wall says
The universe makes no sense
—
It is to be hoped
her viscera was not for
indolence
Painfully she turned on him
reverberations
green bright
They drank in changes
of scenery
He detailed the rather
despairing
lassitude squeezed dry
A positive gem
of speech
the hyphen
of what has gone
before
—
An innocent
in the town of
broad green leaves
A sudden waft
almost out of my child
hood
the sweet song
completely abandoned
Someone was coming
pattering feet
whispering on
this side of the sunny
afternoon
A rare bird survived
the constant rush of
answers that
bitter-sweet day
—
In my other life
I swan along rivers
glassy green practising
cackles of alarm
to spit at two-legged
hormonal beasts.
In this one I swallow
gobs of discomfiture
down
so my given role of
cathartic priest
stays intactly
glowing a private
fireworks display in which
stars keep
falling in picturebook
shapes
soundlessly tinsel
—
What hurt our feelings
soon made apparent :
idiosyncrasies
bitterness
extreme want
weak from hunger
how long would it take
for the ship
listening to the birds ?
erratic behaviour
cold-blooded designs
protection
however true
I was travelling alone
only two courses left open
in the green shade
Sampurna Chattarji is a writer, translator, editor and teacher with twenty books to her credit. These include her short story collection about Bombay/Mumbai, Dirty Love (Penguin, 2013) and ten poetry titles, the latest being the collaborative work Elsewhere Where Else (Poetrywala, 2018) and Space Gulliver: Chronicles of an Alien (HarperCollins, 2020). Her translation of Sukumar Ray’s poetry and prose – titled Wordygurdyboom! – is a Puffin Classic. After Death Comes Water (HarperCollins, 2021) is her translation of Joy Goswami’s prose poems, lauded as a recreation of the Bangla originals in “a living voice, as inventive and vivid as the English of Joyce.”