Shana Yardan
Earth is Brown (est. 1976)
Earth is brown and rice is green,And air is cold on the face of the soul
Oh grandfather, my grandfather,
your dhoti is become a shroud
your straight hair a curse
in this land where
rice no longer fills the belly
or the empty placelessness
of your soul.
For you cannot remember India.
The passage of time
has too long been trampled over
to bear yout wistful recollections,
and you only know the name
of the ship they brought you on
because your daadi told it to you.
Your sons with their city faces
don’t know it at all
Don’t want to know it
Nor to understand that
you cannot cease
this communication with the smell
of the cow-dung at fore-day morning,
or the rustling wail
of yellow-green rice
or the security of
mud between your toes
or the sensual pouring
of paddy through your fingers.
Oh grandfather, my grandfather,
your dhoti is become a shroud.
Rice beds no longer call your sons.
They are clerks in the city of streets
Where life is a weekly paypacket
purchasing identity in Tiger Bay,
seeking a tomorrow in today’s unreality.
You are too old now to doubt
that Hannuman hears you.
Yet outside your logie
the fluttering cane
flaps like a plaintive tabla
in the wind.
And when the spaces inside you
can no longer be filled
by the rank beds of rice,
and the lowing morning
cannot stir you to rise
from your ghoola,
The music in your heart
will sound a rustling sound,
and the bamboos to Hannuman
will be a sitar in the wind.