‘Can you rinse away this city that lasts
like blood on the bitten tongue?’ – Agha Shahid Ali

 

Delhi,
where parrots lift
the weight of tombs,
poets offer daggers
to deepen wounds,
history travels from
harem to brothel,
Delhi,
where slang is a coma
in the comma of speech,
sex with your sister
conveys a euphemism,
abuse is a birthright
denied only to beggars,
Delhi,
where strangers mix
facts with fables,
friends conceal the past
in smoky avowals,
lovers spell their names
on a stone’s forehead,
Delhi,
I pound your
nights
of toxic questions,
I escape your
streets
of towering morgues,
I loathe your
hauteur
of deaf ramparts,
I lose my heart
and
get into your
history,
Delhi,
I recover my mirrors
in
your ghazals,
Delhi,
I offer my childhood
to
your pigeons,
Delhi,
I rescue the sun
from
your debris,
Delhi,
accursed city,
I recall your
heartbreaks
of barking moons,
Delhi,
grotesque city,
I read your
mutilations
of petrified blood,
Delhi,
desecrated city,
I see your
vanished maps
in the eyes of
gypsies,
Delhi,
surrogate city,
I hear your future
on the dreamer’s
lips,
Delhi,
each time a
victim
writes your death,
your crusaders
bring you
to life,
but how long
will you play
this game with
yourself,
how long?
Every year you
parade
the republic’s
ritual,
where the amount
of
remembering
equals
the amount of
forgetting.

/

Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee is a poet, writer, translator and political science scholar. His poems have appeared in World Literature Today, Rattle, The London Magazine, New Welsh Review, Acumen, The Fortnightly Review, and others. His prose has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Guernica, Outlook, The Hindu and The Wire. His first collection of poetry, Ghalib’s Tomb and Other Poems, was published by The London Magazine (November, 2013). His political nonfiction, Looking for the Nation: Towards Another Idea of India, was published by Speaking Tiger Books (August, 2018).