Memory and other Poems

Memory

My mother says
if women did not forget,
they would have just that one child.

I am the result of her forgetfulness.


Urdu

Un-tethered by the written word
my language drifts.

Only sometimes now
it silvers my dreams.
Once weekly over telephone
I search and find it.

The words form and fall.
Their conception mysteriously
lost in the mists of
my journey from my mother’s womb.

Ma

My mother-in-law
Came to be with me
While I waited.

She cooked and she cleaned,
She held my hand,
Lest I slip on the icy steps.
We sat late at night
Talking of the children
She had waited
And borne,
And of the mothers she
Had waited with.

Later when there
Was no more a baby,
Not yet the bleeding to clean,
Only somewhere in the ether
There was one less life,

We sat again at the table
And talked of the unborn babies
She had seen
And I.

Nana

I have never visited my grandfather’s grave.
It lies amidst brambles and grease,
near the tomb of a Pir in an overcrowded city.
The encroaching auto shop uses
the gravestones to hang tools and grease cloths.

He walked my sister to her kindergarten
and bought her chocolates.
He named me and because I hardly cried
Through illnesses called me the patient one.
But I only know this because my mother told me.

When he died my mother cried for six months
And held us close..
I only saw his face in black and white photos,
A swarthy looking man who looked
A little like my youngest uncle.

He fathered ten children, eight of whom survived.
He left behind a widow, three unmarried daughters
A white-washed house and a pension.
Much later when my grandmother began to sink into dementia
She would dress up on an evening and say, my husband is coming.

I never read his poetry, I could not find his books
And maybe would not have understood his Urdu.
Only last week an uncle told me
Nana hazrat was short-tempered
And questioned religion, I felt I knew him after all.