A dark poem about sinister childhood memories, by Gopal, exclusively for Different Truths
Today I summon all those sinister, childhood shadows inside my dark room, my long memory laboratories, they follow me everywhere, humming calendar songs, I wash and rinse them, split them with a broad sword, peel them with a butcher’s knife. I have to tell my unfinished story to the children, of chaotic time, of two poles of loss bringing the long scars down the years to me, piles of debris hide the uncremated bodies, times converge into a flashpoint, into a crimson river. When old world is dying, I still search something transcendent in the balance of blame and guilt, for the self-appointed heroes or the plot spoilers, between the blood-stained walls, the streetlights even now quiver in contours of the yellow leaves.
Visual by Different Truths
Gopal Lahiri is a bilingual poet, critic, editor, and translator with 33 books, including eight edited volumes. Anthologised in over 150 journals and anthologies worldwide and translated into 18 languages across 17 countries, he has received the Setu Excellence Award, a Pushcart Prize nomination, a Best of the Net nomination, the First Jayanta Mahapatra National Award, and First Prize at the 43rd World Congress of Poets. His Selected Poems was published by Classix, New Delhi.
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