Your hunger, a camel through a desert
Sixteen years long. You drank up
Days of sand. At night you ate stars. You forgot
Your hair in the mirror where you
Last saw your face. Far away from home
You met a mirage of faces.
Some gave you promises. Others, prayers.
Time smelt of iron in the gut.
Until one day, a bird sat on your shoulder
And whispered to you,
There is no end to this walking.
It’s time to fly.
You have freed your people, Irom,
From the dream, where
They see you eat from your mother’s hands.
--Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee
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(Manash ‘Firaq’ Bhattacharjee is a poet, writer, translator and political science scholar. His poems have appeared in The London Magazine, New Welsh Review, Rattle, The Fortnightly Review, Elohi Gadugi Journal, Mudlark, Metamorphoses, Modern Poetry in Translation, etc. His first collection of poetry, Ghalib's Tomb and Other Poems (2013), was published by The London Magazine. He is currently Adjunct Professor in the School of Culture and Creative Expressions at Ambedkar University, New Delhi.)
