Synaesthetic Poem by Sridala Swami

Passport photographs are libellous.

I demand that you send
when you are asked for a likeness
a picture of your voice instead.

Go into a recording studio
and wait for a light to go green before
you speak your name clearly into a microphone.They will print for you a waveform image
of your voice. In its lines, asymmnetricaJ but steady,
I will detect the timbre of your voice

and know you by these lines that rise and fall—
abstract as thumb impressions or spectrographs—
all shape and pattern, darkness and light.One day, because we need to make
portraits of our voices
if we want our pictures to speak to us

you and I might find ourselves
in that studio, having our voice-impressions taken.
And because no one else need identify usby these pictures, you will speak my name
and I yours. We will lay these photographs
(where our voices are intent and serious)

one beside the other and marvel
at how beautiful our names look
when spoken by another.