पुल बन गया था

 मैं जिन लोगों के लिए

पुल बन गया था 

वे जब मुझ पर से 

गुज़र कर जा रहे थे

मैंने सुना—मेरे बारे में कह रहे थे :

वह कहाँ छूट गया 

चुप-सा आदमी?

शायद पीछे लौट गया है!

हमें पहले ही ख़बर थी

उसमें दम नहीं है।

--- सुरजीत पातर  

पंजाबी से अनुवाद : चमनलाल

10-Year-Old Shot Three Times, but She’s Fine

Dumbfounded in hospital whites, you are picture-book
itty-bit, floundering in bleach and steel. Braids untwirl
and corkscrew, you squirm, the crater in your shoulder
spews a soft voltage. On a TV screwed into the wall
above your head, neon rollicks. A wide-eyed train
engine perfectly smokes, warbles a song about forward.

Who shot you, baby?
I don’t know. I was playing.
You didn’t see anyone?
I was playing with my friend Sharon.
I was on the swing
and she was—
Are you sure you didn’t—
No, I ain’t seen nobody but Sharon. I heard
people yelling though, and—

Each bullet repainted you against the brick, kicked
you a little sideways, made you need air differently.
You leaked something that still goldens the boulevard.
I ain’t seen nobody, I told you.
And at A. Lincoln Elementary on Washington Street,
or Jefferson Elementary on Madison Street, or Adams
Elementary just off the Eisenhower Expressway,
we gather the ingredients, if not the desire, for pathos:

an imploded homeroom, your empty seat pulsating
with drooped celebrity, the sometime counselor
underpaid and elsewhere, a harried teacher struggling
toward your full name. Anyway your grades weren’t
all that good. No need to coo or encircle anything,
no call for anyone to pull their official white fingers
through your raveled hair, no reason to introduce
the wild notion of loving you loud and regardless.

Oh, and they’ve finally located your mama, who
will soon burst in with her cut-rate cure of stammering
Jesus’ name. Beneath the bandages, your chest crawls
shut. Perky ol’ Thomas winks a bold-faced lie from
his clacking track, and your heart monitor hums
a wry tune no one will admit they’ve already heard.

Elsewhere, 23 seconds rumble again and again through
Sharon’s body. Boom, boom, she says to no one.

---Patricia Smith 

Ode to the flute

A man sings
by opening his
mouth a man
sings by opening
his lungs by
turning himself into air
a flute can
be made of a man
nothing is explained
a flute lays
on its side
and prays a wind
might enter it
and make of it
at least
a small final song

---Ross Gay

Strange Fruits

Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swingin' in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulgin' eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burnin' flesh

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop

--- Abel Meeropol

My Mother’s Fault

You marched with other seven-year-old girls,
Singing songs of freedom at dawn in rural Gujarat,
Believing that would shame the British and they would leave India. 

Five years later, they did. You smiled, 

When you first saw Maqbool Fida Husain’s nude sketches of Hindu goddesses, 

And laughed, 

When I told you that some people wanted to burn his art. 

‘Have those people seen any of our ancient sculptures? Those are far naughtier,’ You said.

Your voice broke, On December 6, 1992, 

As you called me at my office in Singapore, 

When they destroyed the Babri Masjid. 

‘We have just killed Gandhi again,’ you said. 

We had. Aavu te karaay koi divas (Can anyone do such a thing any time?) 

You asked, aghast, Staring at the television, 

As Hindu mobs went, house-to-house, 

Looking for Muslims to kill, 

After a train compartment in Godhra burned, 

Killing 58 Hindus in February 2002. 

You were right, each time. 

After reading what I’ve been writing over the years, 

Some folks have complained that I just don’t get it. 

I live abroad: what do I know of India? 

But I knew you; that was enough. 

And that’s why I turned out this way. 

--- Salil Tripathi