The Irishman in my backyard
We had forgotten all about him,
the Irishman who dropped anchor
at the sickle-shaped bay—awash
with the smells of spice, marigolds
and indigo—and came stomping
through our deep marshes, fighting
giant ferns and elephant grass that
left neat marks, one for every day
of his journey here, on his thigh.
The curious people dropped their
stitching, their weaving; leaving
their silver betel nut cases ajar to
run to their gates only to see his
mud-caked boots disappear into
the fast-darkening thickets.
We had all but forgotten him, till
one restless July night, the wind
playing at my curtains beckoned
me out of bed, and I with slow feet,
took up the path that ran around
the house to the back yard where,
under a bower’s beak, hunchbacked
with a colony of fiery pepper vines,
he lay sleeping. A lush of forget me nots
cooed and parted way at my slightest
touch to reveal a cool stone slab.
I traced the chisel’s faint path back
to when it all began—a shy world
caught in the tangle of another man’s
net, dark tea that burnt our tongues and
filled dainty china cups in another man’s
drawing room, and the writing of these
practiced words, put neatly, side by
side, in another man’s strange tongue.
Trisha Bora is an editor and writer who has been away from her hometown – Assam – for many years now and currently lives in Delhi. She studied Lierature at Delhi University, and started a career in publishing immediately after. Her poems have been published at Ultra Violet, nth position, Pyrta Journal, and Poetry Super Highway among others. She is working on her first collection of poetry.
We had forgotten all about him,
the Irishman who dropped anchor
at the sickle-shaped bay—awash
with the smells of spice, marigolds
and indigo—and came stomping
through our deep marshes, fighting
giant ferns and elephant grass that
left neat marks, one for every day
of his journey here, on his thigh.
The curious people dropped their
stitching, their weaving; leaving
their silver betel nut cases ajar to
run to their gates only to see his
mud-caked boots disappear into
the fast-darkening thickets.
We had all but forgotten him, till
one restless July night, the wind
playing at my curtains beckoned
me out of bed, and I with slow feet,
took up the path that ran around
the house to the back yard where,
under a bower’s beak, hunchbacked
with a colony of fiery pepper vines,
he lay sleeping. A lush of forget me nots
cooed and parted way at my slightest
touch to reveal a cool stone slab.
I traced the chisel’s faint path back
to when it all began—a shy world
caught in the tangle of another man’s
net, dark tea that burnt our tongues and
filled dainty china cups in another man’s
drawing room, and the writing of these
practiced words, put neatly, side by
side, in another man’s strange tongue.
Trisha Bora is an editor and writer who has been away from her hometown – Assam – for many years now and currently lives in Delhi. She studied Lierature at Delhi University, and started a career in publishing immediately after. Her poems have been published at Ultra Violet, nth position, Pyrta Journal, and Poetry Super Highway among others. She is working on her first collection of poetry.
