By Saanvi Lijin Dharman
“Not knowing what life is,
I do not even know whether I am the one living it
or if my life is living me.”
—Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Fractals shift and spin out of the weathered stone basin
where the bird stops to rest.
What he lowers his beak to drink is
between water. Sea and sky lovers
in sepulchral embrace.
My grandfather teaches me Pessoa's paradox
from the rusting chapter ring
of his favourite pocket-watch. Crystal
anointed with centuries of fingerprints,
the penumbral memory of lives that passed,
no more than a tremulous shimmer
in the satins of time.
Death and love cross paths in my heart
like childhood friends—a bird in the hand
or a hand under a pond-stained dress
or a dress dragging along the damp loam,
catching laughter and dead leaves in the lace train.
This is the pattern in the damascening,
the prophecy carved steel-blue through Peruvian copper.
A newborn moon peers from the marble cradle,
its shadow an indistinct cloth on my face.
More than silk headscarf. Not yet funeral shroud.
Swallows circle falling stars. Lapwings tear the hem
from the twisting linens of twilight,
a tragedy in two parts.
Omens will come as long as
someone is sitting by the birdbath,
waiting for them.
By Saanvi Lijin Dharman
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