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UNIT 1: Poetry
1.7. “Her Garden” by Meena Alexander
I
A space without
history—
At the rim of the
pond
Grandmother loosens
her sari
Steps into water
Her skin glistens,
utterly naked.
No one remembers
this.
Lotus petals
flicker
Float to the
axle-tree
Tree of Heaven
They call it in the
family.
By its roots
Grandfather made a
fire
Tossed in her poems
Poor things, penned
in black ink
She had folded them
Into finicky
squares [End Page 1]
Buried them
In her jewel case
With molten rubies
Slow sift of
sapphire
Poems of no
climate,
Words halting,
quick with longing
For a man whose
name no one knew.
She dreamt him up?
Who can tell?
Two whole months
she took to her bed
Her hands bent
under her
Broken winged
Refusing what food
she could.
One night
Half mad, she
stumbled out,
Ran her fingers
Over scorched bark
—Alstonia
Scholaris—what was left of his body
Imagined reliquary
Blushing like koi
fed from her own hand.
II
Syntax surrenders
To an axe biting
into wood
And hearing small
shocks from my past
I know it's all
over—the years of childhood [End Page 2]
The Innocence of
Before and After
Seasons of rain,
fragrance of burnt blossoms
And under the axle
tree
Stars, musk
scented, acutely unreal.
In the shadow of
that tree
Mirza Ghalib comes
to me
Lambswool cap
askew,
Flecked with blood—
I tried to wash it
In your
grandmother's pond.
He took off his cap
I saw it was
crowned
With pale freckled
eggs.
He knelt beside a
hole
Where the tree once
stood.
I can see through this
pit
To the island city
Where you've gone
to live, he said.
In the glory of the
Beloved
All borders vanish.
I saw her then in
moonlight,
A girl, my close
familiar
Her wrists were
stumps
Her black hair [End
Page 3]
Blew into
resurrection waves,
She could not comb
it back.
She was grandmother
And she was me,
She strode up the
invisible
Stairs into the
sky.
III
In glowing heat
In blessed
synchrony
I saw what Ghalib
saw—
Houses with their
eyes torn out
Books knifed,
goblets shattered
Townspeople, some
in soiled dhotis
Twirling from the
lampposts.
O lilies he wrote
on his sleeve
Your mouths
Are filled with
syllables.
Love draws us down
into history.
Men on horseback
bearing myrrh and fine paper
All the way from
Mecca to Manhattan
Dream of a garden
where
A poet sips wine
From the crook of
your elbow—
O girl with moonlit
hair
Whose wrists are
stumps! [End Page 4]
Then whispering
So I had to stoop
to hear:
Beloved my body is
scarred with age
Fit for burial
While yours gleams,
Rainbow colored.
In the rain washed
trees
There is nothing to see but nakedness.
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