Versione Italiana | Nota biografica | Versione lettura |
In twilight as she lies on a mat
I rub my mother's feet with jasmine oil
touch callouses under skin
joints upholding that fraught original thing
bone, gristle skin, all that makes her mine.
All day she swabbed urine from the floor
father's legs so weak he clung to the rosewood bed.
She rinsed soiled cloths, hung them out to dry
on a coir rope by a vine its passion fruit
clumsy with age, dangling.
She lies on a mat a poor thing beached,
belly slack soles crossed sari damp and white.
I kneel in darkness at her side
her oldest child returned for a few weeks
at summer's height.
She murmurs my name
asks in Malayalam `Why is light so hot?'
Beyond her spine I catch a candle glisten.
The door's a frame for something
I'm too scared to name:
a child, against a white wall
hands jammed to her teeth, lips torn
breath staggering its hoarse silence.
All night my voice laced through dreams
tiny eyelets for the smoke
`Amma, I am burning!'
I'm a voice slit from sound
just snitches of blood, loopholes of sweat,
a sack of flesh you shut me in.
What words of passage to that unlit place?
What rites of sense?
Amma, I am dreaming myself into your body.
It is the end of everything.
Your pillow stained with white
tosses as a wave might
on our southern shore.
Will you lay your cheek against mine?
Bless my bent head?
You washed me once, gave me suck
made me live in your father's house
taught me to wake at dawn,
sweep the threshold clean of blood red leaves.
Showed me a patch of earth dug with your hands
where sweet beans grow coiled and raw.
Taught me to fire a copper pan
starch and fold a sari, raise a rusty needle
Stitch my woman's breath
into the mute amazement of sentences.