Caravan to Cox’s Bazaar
We run in the belly of the snake
I hold her hand suck her swollen teat
And jump barbed wire with bones that shake
On shards of glass we step then wade in a lake
Life heaves in me still leaves my mother split:
Afloat now on rivers with bones that break
Raham I see under an Acacia tree and take
Him for my mother slurping jackfruit in sun’s heat:
We run fast in the belly of the snake
Never to return where we were for God’s sake!
(or yours or mine), but sing groan dream beat about
Pausing now in the revelry of a wake
Butterflies carcasses rapes we forget all stakes
our names, our places — Ruáingga Rakhine — lost incomplete
We walk through machetes with bones meant for graves
This caravan is all caravans, churning slowly awake
human tide rubbing human hide with smiles and deceits
Running super fast in the belly of the snake
Through dry winds poison fire and ache
***
Mrinalini Chakravorty was born in Kolkata and grew up in Muscat, Oman, New Delhi, India and various other cities in the West. She is the author of In Stereoptype: South Asia in the Global Literary Imaginary (Columbia UP, 2014) and teaches postcolonial literature at the University of Virginia. She is also a poet deeply interested in the musicality of the ballad, lyric, and lila forms.
