The cold thickens the blood near his heart
We break our bangles on the hearthstone
Are you ate done with the world?
Feed all your worldly husbands to the kitchen fire
Says akka Mahadevi…
The great English kitchen, where Sylvia Plath wrote
Is it a kind of performance art?
On a scaffolding
You do it beautifully well
Every time when
It rains in the streets
Like the blood of Hussein
Every time I die a little
When some wise versifier
Snatches your paisley
Takes it for the finest muslin ethereal
And pulls it through a wedding ring
On a scaffolding
In Nasik
The falling nose ring makes a splash
Amidst currency note smells, in the
Gunpowder plot’s soup kitchen
Children, asleep like gods in my arms.
In Indic, Agha means noble, a flaneur
Of meandering tales,
in English it means kitchen stove
Feed your poems to the fire…
Karbala is gone; to be immortal, and to then die…
For I am the only witness to this
Till eternity
Shahid,
Playing woman to my master
When the Covid rains come to Harappa.
(for Suvir Kaul)
Featured image by Steve Johnson on Unsplash.
Umar Nizarudeen has a PhD in early modern mystical poetry of Kerala from the Center for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is interested in a range of themes, including subaltern studies, post-journalism, Intersectional Matrilineal fiction, Black fabulations, Dalit life writing and autoethnography. He has taught in various colleges of Delhi University, University of Kerala and the University of Calicut.
