They broke your body of fasting.
The smell of iftar had barely left
Your tongue, as you left the city,
Dilli, where you came to gather
Little joys to keep as a souvenir.
They broke your body of fasting
To feed the wolves in their heart,
There is no god left, no prayers,
No wound, to heal or remember.
A shadow in your mother’s eyes
Will grow so wide, it will envelop
The house, no one will wake up
To ask for suhoor, kiss the dawn.
This Eid, the moon will not miss
You, only your mother will look
For you, in streets of her dream
Where people still wait for gods.
Your blood will flow in her tears.
Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee is a poet, writer, occasional translator and political science scholar. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Guernica, The London Magazine, New Welsh Review, Rattle, 3:AM Magazine, Mudlark, MPT, Outlook, The Hindu, The Wire, etc. He teaches poetry at Ambedkar University, New Delhi.
Read more poems by Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee in Indian Cultural Forum here, here, here, and here, and in Guftugu here. Read his translations here.
