A Memorial of Misplaced Music

 

Music

From spaces and times

That you lost on many dotted lines

It’s time to go look for it

In your sleep

And perhaps weep

As you struggle

And rub your knees

To keep

The fragments

And remains

Of Mondays leaking on Fridays

Of teacups on coffee trays

 

Of sex on a bench

To coming in a trench

In narrow lanes

Where voices lost their way

And came back to you

Only yesterday

Or tomorrow

Or never

Music is clever

To melt like ice cream

On all your clothes

Dirty

With love

 

Stolen sounds of borrowed people

Purloined coins

To pay the debt

Of forgetting your love

On someone’s couch

Stuffed with Jazz

From quiet bars

Where lives are kept

In fragile jars

Where people break

In whiskey glasses

And spirits drive themselves

In cars

 

Chattering teeth

From sleepy nights

Music from under the bed denies

How brave you think you are

Fear visits like first love

In every face on even days

On radio channels

In the static of the storm

A phone call to keep you warm

Or a caller tune

Of a wrong number you dialed

Or the cry of the toothless child

 

The sound of the metro

Has stories to tell

An earphone plugged out

Leaking songs from a party

You had forgotten you missed

A secret kiss echoing

In the entire coach

As enquiring eyes encroach

The making of love

Thousands of words let out

As you fidget to find

A fishnet to catch sobs

And lost smiles

From miles that follow

From the graveyard

Of misplaced music

 

Mani Dixit

M.A. Batch of 2020

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The words that invaded our music

 

The air was crisp and flavored 

by the innocence of renewed forgetfulness -

each secret, a note whispered 

into the vessel of the wind.

each memory parcelled neatly

by the naked speech of their tongue.

So it was said -

the flesh of their body and the soil of their land communed 

to sip away at this air- breath by breath…

 

Like the union of each breathe

with the next;

they could not part

they could not tell apart;

the music of their speech 

with the breathing of these hills -

dripping with the collective sigh of six rivers

the murmur of every shy leaf

entwined with the loyalty of ten seasons

and the six million lives it befriended.

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All their secrets, safely sealed 

by an unremembering chamber -

a mind too carefree to cling on 

feelings that ferment into emotions;

a mind not yet stained 

by the sinful revelation of meaning;

that prisonhouse called language.

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In the beginning, was the word and the word was with God and the Word was God... 

 

Of course, they came.

For what does a blank page exist than to await

the tepid violence of a fraudulent invader?

In their very beginning, the words were not welcome

fended off by the bitterness of suspicious winds;

Ever faithful to the fateless man.

But Lo,

she was wiser

letter by letter she deciphered

to crawl, stumble and fall into the cracks

of his foolish body;

to seep into the pores 

of his untamed mind.

Thus

they christened his soul

from Oral to text.

All night long these hills sobbed

Centuries of a sacred vow broken forever…

 

In the land of Tomorrow

I climbed a tree and shook her hard

I throttled her soft fleshy shoots

I demanded her the secrets of my ancestors.

She told me to cut myself open

and Knock on the tombs I carried -

these bones I have inherited.

No living creature will trust me.

No dead soul will assist me.

So here I am Lord

Digging with the spade that buried them

Inside to outside;

Searching with the words that betrayed them

Written to be read.

Sochuiwon Priscilla Khapai

M.A. Batch of 2021

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