Poetry: Oh Kashmir!

August 10, 2019

By Sabyasachi Nag

You are the mirror that makes me cry. Come, let me nail you to my eyes.
Through your nettled veil, let me shower all the kisses I have.
Let’s not talk. Take off your eyes. That’s not me. Your eyes have dried.

Stabs, bruises, burns, ghosts have moved the grass.
Stop pointing your tongue at the black hole between my eyes –
After three thousand years’ forgetting how can that be soul?

Up in your castle of puff what have I to trust – I know you will fly
To seed another universe. Stop walking me on daisies and watercress.
Stop pushing me out of gravity; stop pointing at the moon’s harness.

Keats said beauty is truth. Is there another way of seeing you?
You have taken over my history, my voice, my faith of immanence.
What else remains to take? Are you the fig tree that can’t be sliced?

If I tear your veil and force my lips on the blue flame that burns
Your eyes, could you not keep them shut tonight? Not see, just sense?
Kashmir, why do you look at me and make me cry?

If your arms were just wrapped around my ribs, I would find a way
To out-wriggle you. But you pump my arteries, you seed my groins,
You fire up my fucking head. Soul-weed, what am I with/without you?

Bio:
Sabyasachi Nag is the author of two books of poetry: Bloodlines(Writers Workshop, 2006) and Could You Please, Please Stop Singing (Mosaic Press, 2015). His work has appeared, or is forthcoming in several anthologies and publications including, The Antigonish Review, Canadian Literature, Contemporary Verse 2, Grain, Emerge Anthology, Perihelion, R.kv.r.y Quarterly, The Squaw Valley Review, The Rising Phoenix Review, Void and the VLQ. A native of Calcutta, India, Sachi lives in Mississauga, Ontario with his wife and son. He is a member of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley and a graduate of the Writer’s Studio at Simon Frazer University. He works in human resources and education.

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