Poems by Nabina Das
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Love’s Colours
I have not seen light—red or the flight of birds—ochre this way before, inside your dreams, when you let me in. I have not tasted honey—orange did not know what a rose—white smells like, in your dreams —only when you let me in. In your dreams, I love—blue your every tendon, tender—ivory and count your electric cells till they sparkle like embers. It is in your dreams I swim—alabaster all my unknown moves—golden ask roses to bloom full and lull my throbbing in you. We’re talking of dreams—aqua I hold the seams of the sky—molten so it doesn’t fold up the night so that in reverie I can still lie. Your hand a leaping fish—sliver mouth a dripping honey hive—ginger your pulsation greens me down to where we entwine—two trees. Winter’s Moon A pale winter moon on my awning tiptoeing on dewdrops she tells me her story now. She has smiled for a million faces and broken a billion billowing hearts in silent forests across cities, towers mingled in dusk and fog from Gaza to Perth. Where is that medallion where is our shining fragile moon— millions have cried, in agony, and in ecstasy that slow-bled them into dust She has come right now and I know how her jaadu-tona can make me numb in a jiffy like millions others across this globe wrapped in winter’s low glow and grace. Don’t do this to me moon, I plead beauty is passe, face is not read, ergo: we will shun being called Chandramukhi won’t weave you even in our fairy tales. Pale winter, and your pale magic mystery smile melting in our bones hunger, wars, deception—all is you— even the lies of men stepping on the moon! But stay, stay on the awning tonight why talk of heartbreaks when lives are lost— we will eat you instead of roti bread even if burnt, just as Sukanta said. |
Nabina Das is from Guwahati and is currently based in Hyderabad. Her poetry collections are Anima and the Narrative Limits, Sanskarnama, Into the Migrant City, and Blue Vessel. Her first book of translations is titled Arise Iut of the Lock: 50 Bangladeshi Women Poets in English (Balestier Press, UK, 2022). Her debut book is a novel titled Footprints in the Bajra, and her short fiction volume is titled The House of Twining Roses: Stories of the Mapped and the Unmapped. A Rutgers-Camden MFA alumna, Nabina is the editor of Witness: Poetry of Dissent and co-editor of 40 under 40, an anthology of post-globalisation poetry. She is a 2017 Sahapedia-UNESCO and a 2012 Charles Wallace Creative Writing Fellow; a 2016 Commonwealth Writers features correspondent; and a 2012 Sangam House, 2011 NYS Summer Writers Institute, and 2007 Wesleyan Writers Conference creative writing alumna.
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