Her Father And My Mother Poem by Jagannath rao Adukuri

the fat priest who had led her spirit over fire
ate blobs of sweetened jaggery-rice balls
as the sun burnt your back and the hairless head
First, amid loved rain and river sand
in the ancient temple, there is chariot-God
at night fear stalked between dream-you and you
when she who had born you called, strangely,
till tiny rest-till-peace pills saved you.


You then went into brown sculpture beauty
when the sun-shades played fun with art
You promptly returned with priest-chants
between two deaths there is a years space
her father entering time and your mother.
her ashes box snugly in a numbered locker
his met watery diffusion in distant river
our future deepened our past presently
and the past our parents were went into
numbered lockers and fast flowing rivers.