5 Poems by Sri Lal

Along the Riverbank

i.
I would not hold fast to
anyone’s belief in who I am.
Such shelter is fragile.
Old timber of blame or praise,
the rot of doubt, fear, rage, or sorrow.
Even bright expectation is
like laughter, falling silent.
I rest along the riverbank.
Painted boats pull at their mooring.
No one can define another,
like the Ganga—
not the same today
as tomorrow or yesterday,
even as a river flows on,
one water.

ii.
We each bear a silent grief,
the wound of which we do not speak.
Somewhere,
beyond blood and bone,
I return to Manasarovar
where swans eat pearls,
to a sky that opens out
beyond ideas of yours and mine.
What of this earth belongs
to anyone, anyhow?
I belong to none,
so I wander everywhere—
Each resting spot along the path
I travel is a simple shrine to your beauty.

iii.
As the sun ripens
and drops like fruit,
the sky turns to gold.
Still, I am afraid to let go
of what I know
for what I do not.
If I desire anything,
let it be to be free—
free of nescience,
free of the simple shadow
I cast along this red earth,
upon any man’s mind.
Let this mind be steady.
I am not bound to who
I have been,
and no one knows
yet what is to come.
I was not born to be a possession,
so I possess myself and trouble none.
Whatever the monsoon of yesterday,
in the cool light of morning,
dew falls gently over the Vale of Kashmir.

iv.
I am an open field of nameless wildflowers
that continues to bloom
at the foot of Meru,
even as some quietly die out.
What arises disappears again,
salt doll to seawater,
rain to earth,
breath to sky.
I do not stake my worth on illusion.
I do not claim what is not mine.
I could not hold onto a cloud
any more than I would a monkey’s tail.
At night, kusha grass brings strange dreams.
So, I wake and watch the summer moon
break through the darkness.

v.
If I fail along the way I travel,
let me fail to find fault,
for which of these ten thousand things
is not as it is meant to be—
born of ancestry and circumstance,
spinning on toward a radiance
that is a star-strewn cosmos,
that is this gentle exhale.
Light of sun, moon, and fire—
light that rises as the twilit song
of a Haridwar temple,
light that emanates as breath.
I turn to this light in my inmost shrine.
Each soul I meet
along the path I travel
is the one I seek.
So, I bow low
and wake to my god,
everywhere.
The month is Ashadha.
In your orchard, mango ripens
the color of dawn.

Bionote

Sri Lal’s writings have appeared in Fiction International, the New York Quarterly, Epiphany, Daedalus, Bombay Review, Indian Quarterly, Chicago Quarterly Review, Bamboo Ridge and others. She is also an editor at the Ganga Review. She teaches literature and creative writing in the English Department at CUNY’s Borough of Manhattan Community College.