Imtiaz Dharker Poems

Yes, I do feel like a visitor,
a tourist in this world
that I once made.
I rarely talk,
...

The best way to put
things in order is
to make a list.
...

I was born a foreigner.
I carried on from there
to become a foreigner everywhere
I went, even in the place
...

It's a great day, Sunday,
when we pile into the car
and set off with a purpose -
a pilgrimage across the city,
...

This music will not sit in straight lines.
The notes refuse to perch on wires

but move in rhythm with the dancer
round the face of the clock,
through the dandelion head of time.

We feel blown free, but circle back
to be in love, to touch and part
and meet again, spun

past the face of the moon, the precise
underpinning of stars. The cycle begins
with one and ends with one,

dha dhin dhin dha. There must be
other feet in step with us, an underbeat,
a voice that keeps count, not yours or mine.

This music is playing us.
We are playing with time.
...

We are waving to you from up here,
from the fourth floor to say
don't worry about us, we are fine.
We may be strung out, trousers vest blouse
sari skirt on this washing line
but the sun is being kind to us.
Better here than down there
where you are passing
on the Number 106, crammed
into a hot window frame
with your loud loneliness.

We are floating here,
our hearts filled with soft evening air
and the sound of conversations
in the rooms behind us,
in love with the shape
of each other and the dance
we make together,

waving to you, sending a sign
that you would see if
you were looking but

you are not.
...

Victoria and Elizabeth, Ada and Phyllis
swoop in from the ends of the city to marvel
at the newly unearthed find. The tunnel
has seen it all before. It yawns, and at its open mouth

these people have materialised like words
it has just spoken, a speech balloon
that blossoms out of darkness. The tongue
is black and can only stutter, starless,

I lived on your street, this baby fed at my breast.
We had names, we sat where you sit to drink and eat.

Between the City and the pit, the builders
and the diggers are speechless, staring into
no-man's land, its accidental inhabitants
written out in rows. The earth knows

the world is many-layered and must be used
and used again. It throws a blanket over them,

but we are the ones who are shivering.
We remember their passing as if it were our own.

We will always be aware of them
coming and going in our neighbourhood.
They are with us, hurrying
to the market, or standing side by side

on the platform, holding hands,
hoping we will turn and say their names.

They have been here all this time,
waiting for our train.
...

All these girls are waiting
in this city and every city
for something to begin,

holding their thin bodies in their arms,
hissed at by cars that pass
in the rain. They are contained

behind the barricade that draws
a metal line between them
and the freezing vans.

At the meat market across the road,
busy men in white coats are dancing
their daily load of carcasses

into patient rows.
Later in the night their coats
will be smeared with blood.

Later in the night
when Sailing By is done
and the shipping forecast has begun

thinking of all those souls
out in the dark and cold, thinking
of the ones alone, the others

lying side by side, holding hands,
I remember the young girls
who are younger every day

the ragged line they make,
how their legs are blue
and their faces

lit up before they reach
the light inside,
in anticipation of the dance.
...

(Theatrum Orbis Terrarum)

So this is how it is done, one hand inching
round the coast to map its ins and outs,
to mark the point where ink may kiss
the river's mouth, or blade make up
a terra incognita, an imagined south.

This is where the needle turns to seek
a latitude, where acid bites the naked shore
and strips the sea till it is nothing
more than metallic light. The lived terrain
comes face to face with its mirror image

on the page, the world made up
and made again from sheets of ore, slept in,
loved in, tumbled, turned until the copper
buckles. You see it clearly in the print,
the place where metal

has been wounded, mended, where the hand
attempts to heal the breakline in the heart.
...

i
I may raise my child in this man's house
or that man's love,
warm her on this one's smile, wean
her to that one's wit,
praise or blame at a chosen moment,
in a considered way, say
yes or no, true, false, tomorrow
not today. . .
finally, who will she be
when the choices are made,
when the choosers are dead,
and of the men I love, the teeth are left
chattering with me underground?
just the sum of me
and this or that
other?
Who can she be but, helplessly,
herself?
ii
Some day your head won't find my lap
so easily. Trust is a habit you'll soon break.
Once, stroking a kitten's head
through a haze of fur, I was afraid
of my own hand big and strong and quivering
with the urge to crush.
Here, in the neck's strong curve, the cradling arm,
love leers close to violence.
Your head too fragile, child,
under a mist of hair.
Home is this space in my lap, till the body reforms,
tissues stretch, flesh turns firm.
your kitten-bones will harden,
grow away from me, till you and I are sure
we are both safe.
iii
I spent years hiding from your face,
the weight of your arms, warmth
of your breath. Through feverish nights,
dreaming of you, the watchdogs of virtue
and obedience crouched on my chest. ‘Shake
them off,' I told myself, and did. Wallowed
in small perversities, celebrated as they came
of age, matured to sins.
I call this freedom now,
watch the word cavort luxuriously, strut
my independence across whole continents
of sheets. But turning from the grasp
of arms, the rasp of breath,
to look through darkened windows at the night,
Mother, I find you staring back at me.
When did my body agree
to wear your face?
...