Lopamudra Banerjee[Dedicated to the phenomenal black poet and activist Nikki Giovanni from Virginia, USA, and to her poem ‘Lemonade Grows from Soil, too’, from her book ‘MAKE ME RAIN’: Poems & Prose.]
The raw, spiraling dance that sprang like unseasonal growth
of turbulence, reeking with the spell of non-compliance,
I know how it took roots, and then, the wings to fly,
I know the legs that formed the steps,
going from strength to strength,
I know, the slow birth of many lyrics, enjambed,
Unpunctuated, with many a crooked rhythm,
and I danced, silly and frayed,
with tears gleaming in my eyes.
The soil in which they grew tropical fruits, the soil in which
thorn trees grew along with muck and unyielding weeds,
Poetry was conceived too, smiling in gestation, and then,
Songs sung to us in the womb found cadence, reconstructed
Thriving amid hungry, imbalanced folks, amid bullets dodged,
I know how there’s always the perfect move amid imperfect births,
deaths, burials, finding songs in the darkest days.
I danced, a soul absorbing ‘the light of love’
in unlikely ways, with tears gleaming in my eyes.
Shining in incontinence, in folktales of our own making,
We creep up, from shady, unloved fringes, to quench our thirst.
I know the cymbals playing, resonant in every beat when I danced,
Thunderous, torrential, with tears gleaming in my eyes.
*The expression, ‘dancing with tears in my eyes’, inspired by Utravox
