Why does smoke rise from the land?
I dream — I am peeling charred manuscripts
in a ruined library,
and philosophers of my age,
grinding sunflower seeds in the prison.
Suffering is a strange story —
where does it begin, where does it end?
Can we grasp past or future,
or is war just a confession of time?
Isn’t it strange —
people fleeing ancient cities
as if they are abandoning crowded cinema halls?
Not sure how I escaped into discarded bathtubs,
stitching torn permits for diamond mines in the mountain.
Smoke again rises from the land —
she is naked in a bullet-pierced motel,
and licks salt from my collarbone,
and murmurs,
“god is a drunk old lover,
he forgets my name by morning.”
Is this what it means to survive history —
to kiss in sacred bomb shelters,
to turn love into a ritual of betrayal?
I am riding a mule and reading Camus’s Stranger —
somewhere, a bird refuses to migrate, and
time slowly melts into the dark throat of memory.
About the Poet
Ashwani Kumar is a poet, political scientist and professor in Mumbai. His most recent collection of poems is titled Map of Memories.
