Kargil

About the poem: In Andrey Platonov’s story this month (p. 90), war appears within the mythic frame of folktale, without the names of fields, battles or forces. In this poem by Sudeep Sen, one of the most profilic and versatile of contemporary Indian poets, war is recovered as a wound on public memory, as a place-name that sounds death and loss, as the thought of violence from a place of peace (“Ten years on…”), as a hunt for signs and a mosaic of contrasts. The poem is taken from The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry, a major anthology of more than 85 contemporary Indian poets in English edited by Sen and published this month.

Ten years on, I came searching for

war signs of the past

expecting remnants — magazine debris,

unexploded shells,

shrapnel

that mark bomb wounds.

I came looking for

ghosts —

people past, skeletons charred,

abandoned

brick-wood-cement

that once housed them.

I could only find whispers —

whispers among the clamour

of a small town outpost

in full throttle —

everyday chores

sketching outward signs

of normalcy and life.

In that bustle

I spot war-lines of a decade ago —

though the storylines

are kept buried, wrapped

in old newsprint.

There is order amid uneasiness —the muezzin’s cry,

the monk’s chant —baritones

merging in their separateness.

At the bus station

black coughs of exhaust

smoke-screens everyt

The roads meet

and after the crossroad ritual diverge,

skating along the undotted lines

of control.

A porous garland

with cracked beads

adorns Tiger Hill.

Beyond the mountainsare dark memories,

and beyond them

no one knows,and beyond them

no one wants to know.

Even the flight of birds

that wing over their crests

don’t know which feathers to down.

Chameleon-like

they fly,

tracing perfect parabolas.

I look up

and calculate their exact arc

and find instead,

a flawed theorem.