November 2, 2014: Kafila normally never publishes poems. But sometimes, we make an exception. Because poetry gives voice to memory in ways that prose can’t always. And because we must never forget November 1984.
30 YEARS ON
One hears that the grass has grown again
and old domes have been plated
with gold. Children of ashened fathers
have acquired autos and crystals, and Lutyens’
stones have bloomed
One hears about the impossibility
of living in the past, difficulties of forever
remaining within eddies of anguish
One hears the bankers and media-anchors
talk about the need of the hour
to move on
(Never mind the periodicity of Gujarat, Trilokpuri…)
Ruination of language and biology
and justice – For them merely burned
incense-sticks
or a lost cricket match
Why then before each year comes to an end
I, like so many others,
get Novemberized?
And, you, Jagdeep Kaur, how you have greyed, I hear your choking
whispering, witnessing, voice still
When I woke up…
My eyes could not understand
Why I refused to see
What they had seen
A garden or metal or marble might hold some of your losses
But I am not sure time
will smell like time again
Hope this entire nation tells its children what happened
As Primo Levi said, “Or may…
Your offspring avert their faces from you.”
Hope this entire nation mourns
and performs the deep crystal work
with un-iced solitude and togetherness and
engraves it all on its hearts.
No one can order anybody to unremember 84, especially not
the perpetrator
One knows this all too well
(not after 3 days
or 3 decades)
Dark clouds—
still ascending over Delhi.
To forget is to necklace the dead twice over with rubber tyres
To forget is to stop caring
To forget is to repeat
To forget is to cease loving each other
To forget is to die
Let us never and Never forget
those erased simply because they were
trapped in a certain body
Ash particles, floating in air. They are so near us
The dead
Jaspreet Singh’s latest book “Helium” is published by Bloomsbury. He lives in Toronto.