Robin S. Ngangom
Home
Slippery patch between heart and head
That home for the aged
A brother who held his hand to the hilltop
Where a shrine to a benign goddess stood
Until his brother let go of his hand,
A sister who sang 60s pop while dancing
The twist through his wondering eyes
Until her mind twisted with forgetting,
A river that raged and hypnotised him,
Like a small prey, with swirling brown waters
Until it died, strangled by garbage,
A wasp-nesting attic where he pored
Over stolen adult books until the attic
Flew away one night with his fantasies,
A pillow inside which he hid
His first letter of love,
A star’s droppings.
**
Speaking
My neighbourhood’s erstwhile Marxist and comrade
With whom I grew taller together,
Who once worshipped farmers, workers, peasants,
After turning a motherland-worshipping politician
Genuinely concerned about the endangered species
Of our race and mother-tongue
Told me recently, “Writing poems is fine but think
Of doing a bit for your homeland.”
My ageing poet-brother blurted out one day,
“My poems you translated yourself
Are lying abandoned under your bed.
Do try to make them see that light of day.
What if I were to croak suddenly?”
My long-suffering wife too
Said about an off and on callous daughter,
“Don’t know about others, but being my child
I can’t help caring about her.”
Weighed down with misdeeds
I know I long forfeited my right to speak but
Haven’t stopped speaking to ants and birds.
Just the other day, a falling tree
With its dying breath told me
About its wrenching pain, and I
Could understand her perfectly.
**
The Garden
The one who arrives late
Must pay the price of finding
A city in ruins with a garden in its heart.
Wonder, fear, and regret
Accompany such an arrival like
The one who falls in love but meets
The beloved late, bearing a stone’s weight
On his circumspect heart, despite
The hypnotic attraction of ruins.
He will embrace her who others have,
Drink from lips others have kissed.
The others have been here
When the city was being built,
Partaking in its revelries,
Only to abandon the destroyed city
So that they can soar as archangels
In search of young, voluptuous cities.
But he will paint wretched pictures
Of boats moored to silence, and
When he asks his guide of ruins,
“Who lived in this house, this city?”
He will get the reply, “Love”.
“Every leaf, every shrub in the garden
Knows his heart’s condition”,
Do not step into that garden
Seeking forgiveness for the first sin.
**
Bad Places
Sometimes, through no fault of its own, a neighbourhood picks up a bad reputation. If you happen to visit it on a singularly uneventful day, you will find it roofed with a blue sky, and dark-green pines and bamboos stooping to kiss its dusty road. And although it is true that love was made in all its wintry houses and its dead have been buried in its unruffled graveyard, you would never guess how it earned such a vague hatred from outsiders. Perhaps one night, acting on a tip-off, a party of nervous paramilitary men shot a couple of teenage militants to rags at the gate of one of its unfortunate houses. What is truly ironic is the fact that the revolutionaries do not hail from this neighbourhood, they merely happened to be there during an ill-timed party. It is also entirely possible that a few men and women desperate to find witches and warlocks in an increasingly faithless age, forged themselves into medieval instruments and burnt down a house which looked a little eerie in moonlight and killed a strange old man and his wife.
It has been called names- a hideout, for instance- they say the scars on its walls are bullet marks really. You would be advised not to court its women because the area grows dangerous after sunset. But such neighbourhoods continue to grow as if nurtured by misgiving.
*******
Notes “Bad Places” first appeared: https://raiot.in/bad-places/
Robin Singh Ngangom, born in Imphal, Manipur in north east India is a bilingual poet who writes in English and Manipuri. He studied literature at St Edmund's College and the North Eastern Hill University, Shillong,and serves as a Lecturer in the Dept. of English at NEHU. He is the Editor of New Frontiers, journal of the Northeast Writers' Forum, Guwahati, and is Nominating Editor for Manipuri for Katha Translation Awards, New Delhi. Among his works: --The Desire of Roots ( Poetry in English ). Cuttack: Chandrabhaga, India 2006. --Time's Crossroads ( Poetry in English ). Hyderabad: Orient Longman Ltd, India 1994. --Time's Crossroads ( Poetry in English ). Kolkata: Writers Workshop, India 1998.
Robin S. Ngangom in The Beacon “Father on Earth” and other Poems
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