By: Sukrita Paul Kumar

Preoccupation

The passage
to my mind
is
dark and long.

Lost,
I often remain
at the world’s end
stitching the holes in my memory
living in the past tense
and cooking the
next meal

###

A Borrowed Existence

The still-born world
trembles out of its stillness
when he and she and it
(each one my own thought)
pulsate their way out of me

I too wriggle from some mind

Each one of us
is merely someone’s thought
and each thought
merely a deserter
of God

###

In Relationship

I found a poem
peeping through half-closed eyes
in quest of some meaning in me

I caught the verses
one by one
and watched myself
getting fettered in the
beautiful elusive net
woven
in love and truth
with promises of
may be
a billion poems.

###

The Rustle of Leaves

Unfolding
its leaves
in you,

my daughter,
is
my history;

I am,
I know now,
my mother,
as you
are yours.

###

Sukrita Paul Kumar, former Fellow of Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, held the prestigious Aruna Asaf Ali Chair at Delhi University. An honorary faculty at Corfu, Greece, she was an invited resident poet at the prestigious International Writing Programme at Iowa, USA. Her most recent collections of poems, are Vanishing Words, Country Drive and Dream Catcher. Her critical books include Narrating Partition, The New Story and Conversations on Modernism. She has co-edited many books, including Speaking for Herself: Asian Women’s Writings (Penguin). An Honorary Fellow at HK Baptist University, Hong Kong, she has published many translations and has held exhibitions of her paintings