These are two poems which came with the school newsletter and for me they capture, in part, some of those special moments that happen almost daily here when you know what you have just seen, heard, or smelt is just so different and remarkable yet hard to put into words or contain in a picture.
Condensed
In the dusty dawn, it drips
From the slant-topped tent roof
of the South Delhi taxi stand,
Where a dozen drivers sleep,
Cheek-to-foot and sweating,
Months and miles from their families,
And feather-skied farms.
As it falls, it gives off a faint odor:
part diesel fuel,
part corn roasting on coals,
as smelled by men who have fallen asleep,
recalling the taste of food,
prepared by loving hands.
~ Michael Creighton
Muliebrity
I have thought so much about the girl
who gathered cow‐dung in a wide, round basket
along the main road passing by our house
and the Radhavallabh temple in Maninagar,
I have thought so much about the way she
moved her hands and her waist
and the smell of cow‐dung and road‐dust and wet canna lilies,
the smell of monkey breath and freshly washed clothes
and the dust from crows’ wings which smells different –
and again the smell of cow‐dung as the girl scoops
it up, all these smells surrounding me separately
and simultaneously – I have thought so much
but have been unwilling to use her for a metaphor,
for a nice image – but most of all unwilling
to forget her or to explain to anyone the greatness
and the power glistening through her cheekbones
each time she found a particularly promising
mound of dung.
‐ ‐ Sujata Bhatt
Food prepared by loving hands. Ah, that's such a memory stirrer.
ReplyDeletePrecisely MM
ReplyDelete