Sampurna Chattarji: A response to a line in Arianna Borrelli: Apples
How do you say it in mathematics?
How do you say ‘I miss you’?
How do you say what you cannot, dare not?
Is smuggling numbers into a poem a solution?
Do you hope the numbers will speak clearly of what is still hidden from you?
And so the last part of my seven-part poem reads:
“The azaan woke me at 6:00.
The thunder at 4:00.
The nightmare at 2:48.
From 2:48 to 5:21
I sat and read a Hundred Scottish Love Poems.
You are forty-two
and have three children
from two different women.
My favourite song is on Track 9.
I play it again and again,
keeping demons and darkness at bay.”
How do you say what came before?
Link
Arianna Borrelli: Apples