Kids Corner

Poetry

One Hears That The Grass Has Grown Again

JASPREET SINGH

 

 

 




One hears that the grass has grown again

and old domes have been plated

with gold. Children of ashened fathers

have acquired autos and crystals, and Lutyens’

stones have bloomed


One hears about the impossibility

of living in the past, difficulties of forever

remaining within eddies of anguish


One hears the bankers and school-masters

talk about the need of the hour

to move on

Ruination of language

and justice – For them are merely burned

incense-sticks

or a lost cricket match


Why then before each year comes to an end

I, like so many others,

get Novemberized?


Perhaps until the losses are fully processed

and accepted, our work of mourning

shall remain unfinished ...

Perhaps only then time will smell like time again

Hope we perform this deep

crystal work of past-presentness

with un-iced solitude

and togetherness -- using all the instruments

of creativity


No one can order us to unremember, especially not

the perpetrator

We know this all too well

(not after 3 days

or 3 decades)


To forget is to stop being honest to oneself

To forget is to necklace the exterminated twice over

To forget is to erase from our daily prayers sarbat da bhalla

To forget is to stop loving life

To forget is to cease loving each other

To forget is to die


Let us never and Never

Let us never forget 1984

 

The author is an award-winning Canadian writer. His latest novel, Helium, focuses on the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms in India.

July 21, 2014

Conversation about this article

1: Kaala Singh (Punjab), July 21, 2014, 1:18 PM.

I have to confess, my blood boils when I look at the pictures of these goondas attacking Sikhs in November 1984. India is full of such small-time criminals who will do anything for a small amount of money. But dealing with these cowards is no big deal. We have to stay united and have some numbers wherever we live. Wherever organized, small groups of Sikhs were able to chase away big mobs of these rats in 1984.

Comment on "One Hears That The Grass Has Grown Again"









To help us distinguish between comments submitted by individuals and those automatically entered by software robots, please complete the following.

Please note: your email address will not be shown on the site, this is for contact and follow-up purposes only. All information will be handled in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Sikhchic reserves the right to edit or remove content at any time.