Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih

.

Explanation

You wondered how I managed 

to come near you.

There is a part of the fence 

in need of repair. 

I wriggled in through that.

I crept and crawled 

and only stopped 

whenever you looked my way. 

Our similarities startled me!

The urge to write about you

was an upwelling of hot spring.

My love became a river, 

constantly surging, 

constantly in flood.

It did not need the summer rains,

nor was it affected by the winter drought.

It always flowed over the danger marks, 

no matter what the season.

But despite our closeness,

it will never meet its sister stream

emerging from your heart. 

They will never mingle and merge,

but mine has swollen nonetheless 

into a vast and boundless sea.

Stray Thoughts on Award Night

Girls in red Tripuri dresses 

standing with folded namaste

on both sides of the cement path.

They are blood-red roses

he cannot pluck to possess.

They are the madness of instincts, 

checked only by the antidote of reason.

Rameshwar is thanking us on the microphone ...

Ananya whispers, 

‘Tomorrow, they must drop us at the airport.’

Whereas Ananya is eager to depart,

man is reluctant to let go:

his blind faith in heaven can neither

allay his fears nor console his losses.

Anubhav cannot comprehend the words 

of a fellow poet. He too, the poet in question, 

cannot appreciate the splendour of spiders 

seeking refuge from the heat in his bathroom.

He, who seeks the soul of poetry, also seeks to destroy 

creatures who would weave a star for Neruda.

While the crowned poet of the festival 

takes his ‘North East Poetry’ trophy home, 

his fellow poets seek self-torment in extra-literary reasons.

This, they say, should bring them an early death.

Ananya waxes eloquently on the podium.

The lights go off ... he loses his voice.

It seems somebody is holding a switch

to our lives.

Tourist Attraction

Six types of huts 

(bamboo and thatch)

raised on pillars 

of wood, or stone,

two feet tall.

Disease, hardship, hunger, 

stalk these dilapidated huts,

some, with big holes in the walls.

The people on the verandas

have dirty faces,

wear dirty clothes,

some, no better than rags.

The calendar

that puts them on display, however, 

is a sold-out sensation this year.

Our poverty has truly become

a great tourist attraction.

Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih

Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih is a multi-award-winning writer, writing poetry, novels, short fiction and plays in Khasi and English. His latest works include the epic novel Funeral Nights (Westland [India] /And Other Stories [UK/US]), The Yearning of Seeds (HarperCollins) and Time’s Barter: Haiku and Senryu (HarperCollins). He is the author of Around the Hearth: Khasi Legends (Penguin) and the co-editor of Dancing Earth: An Anthology of Poetry from Northeast India (Penguin). 

           He has published his works extensively in India and overseas. Among his forthcoming books are his new novel, The Distaste of the Earth (Penguin) and the co-edited anthology Late-Blooming Cherries: Haiku Poetry from India (HarperCollins).