PARTITIONS OF MEMORY
For Gurdit
What is lost is lost
Why look for it in the heart
Hindu, Moslem and Sikh – all lost
Homes shrines entire villages
What god-given right did the Angrez have?
Look at our rivers : Do they respect borders?
do they not rise here and go there?
Birds, windblown seeds, the air itself…?
Who put the sword in the heart
the knife in the back?
Do we not all turn our backs on our childhoods,
our parents?
What is motherland without mother
or, the other way round?
2
When the motherland was bartered away
Our mothers were bartered away
Some died of dislocation
Some of the effort to transplant themselves in new soil
Some survived rape
Some went over to the enemy, the new reality
Some were simply pushed into a well
3
There is a lady who refuses to draw water
She is the one who survived the well-drowning
Her men from the other side of the border have come to take her home
They have blighted her home
If you diced water all your life, you die by water
It is the same for air, fire, earth…
4
Our bodies
This little box, this little chest of secrets
O set it afloat on the flowing water
Do let it go All rivers end
You have died many time before and rebirthed
Now obliterate all your traces
That you ever flowed…