A Kashmiri Stone-Pelter (after Arcimboldo’s Librarian). Image by Nitasha Kaul.
They fought, we heard of it; we remembered, they heard of it
sorrows against sorrows, memories against memories
words lost, tongues turned to stone:
it’s raining stones upon the ancient monuments
the eyes of the people are stone
the hearts of the soldiers are stone
stones have begun to grow on the trees too
the flowers are stones
the children are stones
some gods are stones
the houses of the gods are stones
the graves are stones
insatiate stones
inviolate stones
stones that fall from eyes instead of tears
stones that stay piled up as cairns
marking the stony solidity of a time
that refuses to relent
Kashmir: A Country of Many Names and Numbers
A plant, suffocated but resilient, underneath a glass pavement, that makes me think most vividly of Kashmiris (Nitasha Kaul)
My homeland is everywhere
It’s a fabric you know, it’s a vision you see
An Icelandic novel, an American song
An English warship, a paisley bikini
A people torn by dates, deeds, deaths
By the numb destructive errors of numbers upon numbers
That haunt me wherever I go:
One kingdom, many rulers
Three regions, districts Ten, Four, Three plus One
Many more
A dotted line, all Control
Half a Million soldiers
An Eight-year old child
Casualties, no reckoning
Three Hundred and Seventy, the Article
Thirty-Five, the Corollary
Twenty-Second, the Congress, where I spoke
The Fifth of August
And October, was it Halloween?
Cambridge
On stage, mid-speech
Talking of Eighteen-Hundred-Forty-Six sale,
Nineteen-Hundred-Fifty-Three tugged at memory
Thirty-Seven, Forty-One, Forty-Nine
Resolutions at the UN
Wars Three, improper wars, countless
Nineteen-Hundred-Thirty-One, don’t forget
And Nineteen-Hundred-Forty-Seven
But what of Nineteen-Hundred-Ninety
Ever avenged
Or summer Two-Thousand-Sixteen?
Surely Twenty-Third February,
And Twenty-Seventh October
And those files numbered
In dusty archives too
As I reach for a phone to call Kashmir
This mad rain of numbers
Dials only silences
