For My Father

Sometimes,
When I hear a song
That you would’ve loved

Something tears up inside;
At your listening, silenced

And if the release date precedes your death
I wonder if you had heard
In a casual
Or a secret
Or a forgotten hearing

Which you misplaced from getting home
Like your other gift songs

But when I see a copyright and published date
That is after December 1995
It is a funny feeling indeed

A song unborn at the time of your going
And yet a song that simply demands,
In fact is, your listening

And I wonder how this song can be
Without the hearing that brought
Bengali songs to life for us

Be that as it may,
The moot point remains:

That more than in the celebrations
More than in the festivities and
The birthdays and
The weddings and the
Structured memories

It's in these songs
Unheard by you
That you come alive

In all my rooms

My Husband Writes to Me

YOU HAVE, MY DEAR, AN ETERNITY OF UNREST.....


You have, my dear, an eternity of unrest.....

were the phrases that tumbled for joan of arc

in her “knightsuit” and florence with the

“nightlamp”.

You have, you have, you have, my dear.....an eternity of unrest,

the victories of margaret thatcher and

the books of germaine greer, the ultra cool

barbs of shobha de and the thatched cliches

of femina columns.

You have an eternity of unrest an eternity my dear an eternity...of unrest,

to support so many

tendencies and fierce

longings and motivations.

How does the yearning for
home,

my man and

my home and

my man and

my child and

my man and

our home and

our child and

my life and his

life and my

life and our

child’s life

and my

home….
merge with my cool-ness, hip-ness, today-ness, why

does it interfere?

You have my dear, an eternity of unrest,

as alanis screams and tracy groans and baez

cries and sheryl chills while sinead smiles.

You have, my dear, (need I repeat, or say more) an eternity, (should I continue?) of unrest!

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My husband wrote this, and gifted it to me a few weeks ago. Perhaps that restless space where one feels an unrest and the other expresses it, is the closest one can ever get to restful spaces.

And as Hamlet said as he fell, "the rest is silence".