Category: Uncategorized
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Manikarnika
I’d mentioned before, my dear, that this poor land on this horrible earth has never seen a tragedy. That after life: life. Death was only a pause, a line break before the next dazzling stanza of the poem : where fortunes change, lovers unite, and dead parents always return as beautiful infants. I know we’re…
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After a death
I’ve heard that one shouldn’t, but I mix scents : so by the time I am perfuming my left wrist – usually with common notes of rose, violet, and amber – it seems I am not a woman, not even two, but a diaphanous mix of fragrances. As if I only exist as a floating…
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Purpura
I try to write but words keep getting entangled with my fragile veins : and instead of a letter, all that appears is a red-purple spot on my body. Your name is a thorn of a disappearing rose, lodged near my lungs, and each time I think about you, a vessel bursts somewhere deep inside.…
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I Giorni
My dear, why think of what I said years ago, when I was still young, when men would go speechless at my sight, when love only lasted for a moment and a half. My dear, forgive me, I know now that you’ve painted me each time as I am, as I must have been. I…
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Paris
There is a photograph, which has continued to haunt me for years : a photograph taken somewhere in Paris, of four men, none of whose faces are visible, and even though I am sure you are not one of them, on some days I am uncertain, my dear. Have I told you how at midnight,…
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beyond six rivers
Walking on a particularly hot day through the Delhi emporiums, looking for a saree : Benarasi : I stopped for a moment as I saw myself as I was centuries ago, in Harappa or Mohenjo Daro – my memory is weak, forgive me – and in that strange mirror, where I could see two of…
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Aabi
I can’t say if this entire scene is a memory of a dream, I really can’t say, but sitting in that vaporous classroom in Calcutta, reading lines from the Sakuntala, I remember someone, I can’t remember who, said that tragedies didn’t exist in ancient Sanskrit texts, that it was an imported concept, that whatever died…
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On Segalen
It’s a strange midnight : as I lie here almost sleepy from the blue gin, reading letters not written to me by a lover not mine, remembering the taste of kisses that were stolen in another life. I have heard, my dear, although I am not sure, that old wine is more potent. What, then,…
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A letter to my unknown lover
It’s now almost 5 degrees here, cold for me, perhaps not for you: except the afternoons, which are usually quite warm with so much sunlight, that it feels like the skin is burning. Sometimes I forget that it is not longing, but the sun that makes my body warmer, sometimes I also forget, my dear,…
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A short short note on my morning
I have a mild fever, all morning I have been drifting in and out of sleep : everything is blurring into something else, and it seems like I have forgotten how my own face looks in a mirror, this is the second day of the new year, no no it is the the third, my…
