Reading Celan at the Liberation War Museum

Cover art from the author’s new book Seam, by Dilara Begun Jolly

Cover art from the author’s new book Seam, by Dilara Begun Jolly

—Independence Day Celebration 2011, Dhaka

            i.

In a courtyard, in these stacks of chairs

            before the empty stage—near are

we Lord, near and graspable. Lord,

            accept these humble offerings:

stacks of biscuits wrapped in cellophane,

            stacks of bone in glass: thighbone,

spine. Stacks of white saucers, porcelain

            circles into which stacks of lip-worn

cups slide neat. Jawbone, Lord. Galleries

            of laminated clippings declaring war.

Hands unstack chairs into rows. The dead:

            they still go begging. What for, Lord?

Blunt bayonets, once sharp as wind?

            Moon-pale stacks of clavicle? A hand—


 

            ii.

Moon-pale stacks of clavicle a hand

            brushes dust from. I lost a word

 

that was left to me: sister. The wind

             severs through us—we sit, wait

for songs of nation and loss in neat

            long rows below this leaf-green

flag—its red-stitched circle stains

            us blood-bright blossom, stains

us river-silk—I saw you, sister, standing

            in this brilliance—I saw light sawing

through a broken car window, thistling

            us pink—I saw, sister, your bleeding

head, an unfurling shapla flower

            petaling slow across mute water—


 

            iii.

Petaling slow

                        across mute water,

bows of trawlers

                               skimming nets

of silver fish that ripple

                                        through open

hands that will carve them

                                                  skin-

less. We were hands,

                                      we scooped

the darkness empty. We

                                              are rooted

bodies in rows silent before

                                                    the sparked

blue limbs of dancers

                                       leafing the dark

light indigo, then

                               jasmine alighting

into a cup, then

                             hands overturning

postcards bearing flag

                                         and flower, hands

cradling the replica of a boat,

                                                     hands

thrust there and into

                                             nothingness. You,

a corpse, sister, bathed

                                          jasmine, blue—


 

            iv.

A corpse: sister, bathed jasmine. Blue,

                                       the light leading me from this gift shop into

a gallery of gray stones: Heartgray puddles,

                          two mouthfuls of silence: the shadow

            cast by the portrait of a raped woman trapped

in a frame, face hidden behind her own black

                            river of hair: photo that a solemn girl

your corpse’s age stands still and small

                         before. She asks, Did someone hurt her?

 

               Did she do something bad? Her mother

                                           does not reply. Her father turns, shudders,

as the light drinks our silences, parched—


                             as I too turn in light, spine-scraped—

you teach you teach your hands to sleep


 

            v.

you teach you teach your hands to sleep

because her hands can’t hold the shape

of a shapla flower cut from its green leaf

because her hands can’t hold grief

nor light nor sister     in her hands fistfuls

of her own hair    on her wrists glass bangles

like the one you struggled over your hand

the same hand that slapped a sister’s wan

face    look   the young girl stands before

the photo of the young woman who swore

she would not become the old woman

crouched low on a jute mat holding

out to you a bangle    a strange lostness was

bodily present       you came near to living

 

            vi.

Bodily present, you came near to living,

            Poet, in this small blue dress still stained,

the placard states, with the blood of the child

            crushed dead by a soldier’s boot. Who failed

and fails?—nights you couldn’t bear the threshed

            sounds of your heart’s hard beating. I press

a button: 1971 springs forth: black and white

            bodies marching in pixelated rows. Nights

you resuscitated the Word, sea-overflowed,

            star-overflown. A pixelated woman tied

with a white rope to a black pole, her white

            sari embroidered with mud or blood. Nights

you were the wax to seal what’s unwritten

            the screen goes white in downdrifting light.


 

            vii.

The screen goes white. In downdrifting light,

            the stairwell is a charred tunnel. We walk out

of it into the couttyard—my skirt flares a rent

            into the burnt evening. Something was silent,

something went its way—something gnashes

            inside me, sister—along the yellow gashes

of paint guiding me through these rooms lined

            with glass cases, past machine gun chains

shaped into the word Bangla. Here, on this

            stage, a dancer bows low her limbs

once more before us. The stage goes silent.

            We gather ourselves: souvenirs of bone.

Pray, Lord. We are near. Near are we, Lord—

            in a courtyard, in these stacks of chairs.

*This poem appears in the author’s new book, Seam, published by Southern Illinois University Press.


Tarfia Faizullah was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Texas. Her parents immigrated to the United States from Bangladesh in 1978. Her book, Seam, won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award.