Taz Rahman – Two Poems
What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life
We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. - E. M. Forster
Lake-breeze pokes sunlit errors. bees clump
repeating the same note in rose-pink
spiraea, leaves
ovate a winding path unworthy of the body,
Furzton flats and sharps inside
a coated
wooden hammer to dismantle the gone.
The sun is too bright, I can’t
differentiate between
the weight of sin in blossom and guava jam
two decades old sticking to the base
of a jar past its maker,
this empire stretches gaab, daab, amra, sours
the formation of phlox, footsteps
thrum unknown keys,
open no doors, chainsaws cut distant vines
on roads before the age
of cycle-paths,
mechanised mowers grit teeth for mornings
to sleep still at half past ten,
green malingers
in the linden and the lime, Dravidic tongues
inflect Kerala, shatter invisible
coconuts into tales
circulating Lidl and the Woodville, tales
of how this skin is blotchy,
has taken on memory,
wrists wrinkled, corners of nails gawking
ponytails in flicks and frets.
Gravel loops
in Egyptian terry shy of the sea sleeping
in heraldic strokes two miles
off, tender kahins
summon tufts of light too far to inherit,
the wind chimes secrets in reeds
sifting green
no right to be this soft with no past, a canal
winds to distemper alders,
clouds scatter
devious pores to deflower the distance between
two points on a map a month
short of 28 years
straight as the heron's dart, duckweed docks
Novello and Dahl in loins let lost,
at Cadwaladers'
almonds deconstruct ridges of cream for ice
to crackle, the ceiling moves
front to back,
skin mulls memory in foam for dawns to reconcile
form on mattress. Flesh immures ketones
for the fridge-grown
fungus to puff air so lowly junipers yet to bear
the weight of sin may breathe
fresh, quake
aspens in the lightest breeze in tombed esplanades
of the darkest limbs, ash sleeves
for the story ended.
Anda
Such grief does not desire consolation. It feeds on the sense of its hopelessness. Lamentations spring only from the constant craving to re-open the wound. - “The Brothers Karamazov", Fyodor Dostoevsky
Bolt all doors, latch windows, let steam
fester. Daal lingers long past the plates
scraped. The other night I cracked halua:
grate your carrots thin, shear in index-skin,
watch a sunset grind yellow into orange,
bleed. Smoke gathers a room away burning
logos, clarifying butter - churn baby churn,
ghee another year, a glass tomb to sensate
a crane's yearning for coronal fire. Why,
to preserve what? Rosewater clears
the palette, what rises falls, evenings circle,
groan, cling to Cathays, woodpigeons
articulate their thirst for gravel. Winter
broke me like a speckled thrush on its
tangled pine for almanacs. I predict drizzle
startling the corners of windowsill moss,
starlight and moonlight and amorous
melodies thickening bounteous spores
to reassert green. This morning, my
sister lit her Belling, I had not smelt
sugar suppurating anda in three
decades inside a house, her home:
Scrat and Thumper sneak in under
the fence yet to gauge what business
the wagtail has with perished leaves,
I dream all day of being an ill-fitting
cardigan, slouch forget-me-nots among
sleet. Inward fog flutters in the distance
confusing nomenclature, remains
itself. The self. I am west. My abode
is a Welsh fridge. The top-shelf
caresses the frosted element slowing
death, halting birth, the last little
tupperware my mother filled two
years before she dies and I save
the last dollop, mould-clad like her
disintegrating body, soft tissue aching
communion, skeletal, drifting prayer.
--
Note:
In Bengali ‘anda’ is the word for egg. The shape of the number zero, ‘shunno’ in Bengali, resembles the shape of an egg. Shunno as the literary term also refers to nothingness, absence or vacancy, and therefore in common use ‘anda’ means nothing or nothingness.
Taz Rahman is a Cardiff based poet of Bengali heritage. His first collection is forthcoming in February 2024 from Seren Books. He is a 2023 Hay Festival 'Writers at Work' alumni, was shortlisted for the 2022 Aesthetica Creative Writing Award, and was in the 2021 Literature Wales annual writer development scheme for which he was mentored by the Poetry Wales editor Zoe Brigley. He has been published in Poetry Wales, Interpreter's House, Bad Lilies, Propel, Anthropocene, Atrium and in numerous other UK magazines. He is on X, formerly Twitter as @amonochromdream
Photograph: Whispers in the mist by Arunava Bal
Arunava Bal resides in the town Birati, in Kolkata, India. He is a cardiac non-invasive technologist by profession and education, and a nature lover and art lover in the core of his heart. Besides traversing the mundane, he loves daydreaming and getting lost in the happiness of the little things in life. His works have previously appeared in Chestnut Review, The Hooghly Review and Jaden Magazine.