Three Poems
Dha
Ladakh
Dha, where the arrow landed
in paradise
shhht!
Unclear in legend – when the shaft flew from his bow
did it pierce a green-bellied valley
hung low and heavy amid Himalayas,
or spark and scrape to a stop in a lucky crevice
and sprout amongst fossilled rock, dropping
the first apricots into infertile granite?
A valley cut by mighty Indus, mother of rivers
swallowing seeds and accidental offerings
indiscriminate in her hunger and her embrace.
And later, after the truth of the beginning
is no longer important, and apricots and apples
overflowed from streams
screams from Kargil ricocheted through trees,
across roofs heaped in blankets of orange,
apricots drying for winter, a mountain no different
from any other marks the border with Pakistan.
Stillness in the ruin of rose gardens
bombs lobbed over heads neither Muslim nor Hindu
but collateral damage, echo of spinning prayer wheels,
the grandmothers, hair down to their knees and looped
back up again, grey in the roots and black strands
saved and woven into the ends, scrap of youth –
they remember this old sadness as they drop apricots
into baskets and ancient coffee tins,
flowered hats balanced over braids.
One young man makes jam all day long in the summer
another smokes pot down in the apple trees
a monkey child eats grapes in the canopy
none of them legends yet.
Everyone claims they can’t remember
the old stories, but a faraway focus
comes into a father’s eyes as he rocks
the sheep-hide full of milk to make butter,
rhythmic roil of back and forth –
shh, shh, shh,
this is the story of how the arrow landed
in paradise.
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