by Carol Blaizy D’Souza

‍ ‍"We need to find the right geography for our revelations."
--Etel Adnan, Of Cities and Women: Letters to Fawwaz

Swaddled in quiet, sitting on a straight-backed wooden chair
I wink back at the strip of glass-sheet sea, glittering in the distance.
Grey in the May dusk when I visited her last,
she was frothing frustration at the sleek-backed rocks
dozing on her banks. They only sank deeper into slumber,
their soft snores bubbling up her sandy shanks.
In my early middle age, the moral obligation to work feels Catholic.
V, sundered to shreds with no hope of mending, our friendship
cowers in a corner of my mind always. You are a shadow
slinking at the centre of every thought. Confessing is a supine activity,
I read in a painter’s diary. At my window, sashes of sunlight slip
through the blinds and rest possessively on my books.
The moong, soaked last night, drained this morning,
is sprouting another year into my life. It is Saturday.





‍ ‍With thanks to Janos Lavin and John Berger

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Carol Blaizy D’Souza is a poet, translator and researcher living in Chennai, India. A collation of her work can be found at linktr.ee/cblaizd.