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POETRY FOCUS: POEM BY PRIYA SARUKKAI CHABRIA

Eyewear is very pleased to feature a poem by the Indian poet Priya Sarukkai Chabria today.



At The Great Wall*

1.

 

Beneath a wind-blown sky

white spring flowers flutter

like prayer flags against the stone

 

wall which serpentines up and down

the hills, its dark density

serrations thrusting from the dragon’s

 

spine --which sleeps beneath the earth

wallowing in  its waste: molten

lament and power. It sighs 

 

as late light’s honey licks

the wall’s charcoal pores and sucks

darkness up its throat.
 

*From the sequence of poems titled China Suite



Priya Sarukkai Chabria is a poet, novelist, essayist and translator with five published books.  Awarded by the Indian Government for her Outstanding Contribution to Literature her works’ translated into six languages & is published or forthcoming in Adelphiana, Soundings ,  South Asian Review, Caravan ,Post Road, The British Journal of Literary Translation , Drunken Boat,  Pratilipi,  Language for a New Century, The Literary Review,  IQ, Another English: Anglophone Poems from Around the World among others. Forthcoming in 2015 are translations of Tamil mystic poet Aandaal (Zubaan) with poet Ravi Shankar, and a short story collection(Niyogi Book). She edits Poetry at Sangam.

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