Poetry

S,N,O,W

JASPREET SINGH

 

 

 

for S.J.

 

 

yesterday

driving out of the city

fresh snow on both sides

 

in purple sunset

white fields

almost caught fire

 

three continents away from ‘home’, some

three decades away from the ashmilk

of 1984

 

my hands on the wheel

listened  to knots

of pain of others

 

Orwell was born in India, said the CBC

radio in a slow undulating

crackling voice

 

Sikh bodies necklaced with rubber

tyres, White phosphorous sprinkled

on children

 

Congress and non-Congress thugs

raped

women

 

and raped

and raped

and raped

 

my car raced through flakes,

refusing to stay, and soon it became freezing

rain

 

sometimes I simply fail

to handle rust, and atmospheric

disturbances

 

the rubber is damaged -

on the windshield

the wiper kept screeching

 

mixing ‘rain’

and ‘radio’ and

‘riots’

 

breaking the last word

a wrong word

into smaller and smaller bits

 

de-inseminating

perpetrator’s triumphant  vocabulary and vowels 

back into the alphabet

 

tree

earth

shake

 

earth

tree

shake

 

for thirty years

the so-called   r, i, o, t, s  arrested over a billion tongues, and

Newton-neutered the crime   s, t, o, r , i   of  a dynasty… 

 

as it spoke to bare, dimly-lit

glass

i saw a wound in rubber’s eyes, my friend

 

a chill, a spasm, a foam-frost, asking forgiveness, both

from language, and traces

of the November dead

 

who would have known? a small

quivering piece of rubber—

clairvoyant

of a silenced genocide

 

snow is snow

breath breath

garden ashes

 

 

Jaspreet Singh’s latest book, Helium, is based on November 1984.

November 24, 2014

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