‘menos tu vientre’ by Debasis Mukhopadhyay

(after Miguel Hernandez)

… that the borders of our memories are (always) shifting : Yeats

she knows

stay

just said

footfalls & wings

been broken kind

always undoing the hasp

tugging endless

tongues

that’d played & honeyed

loft sorrows

of silk

laid over blue nails

absence

absence

absence

borne away

in a scant light

rosewood beads

around the neck

around nothing

molting

the tang of longing

 

she knows

nest hollowed out

and nails hammered into

the hatchlings

always blind & naked

what a moist evening

branches beneath

rattling

before

always lopsided roads

tossed to

her incised map

to terraform

memories

clogged

between

blinds & baffles

and her

bath bubbles narrate satin in life

over the crust of bleeding

marauder in her womb

stars’ egress

sultry blubber

& biography

cracking up

 

she knows

brambles that hide her eyes

hide the sea in a fold

such old words

stay

said before

never before

blood

shifting borders

darkness abloom

the hackneyed strings of guitar

cry

tu vientre

tu vientre

menos tu vientre

 

* Link to the original poem with English translation : https://sites.google.com/site/nightingalesthatsing/40-poemas/menos-tu-vientre

 

Menos tu vientre by Joan Manuel Serrat on Youtube :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZi1Rkw4t3Y