As Breast Cancer Awareness Month concludes in October, here are two poems that capture the experience of being a primary caregiver for someone battling and recovering from breast cancer.
Two poems delve into the emotional landscape of being a primary caregiver for someone battling and recovering from breast cancer
As Breast Cancer Awareness Month concludes in October, here are two poems that capture the experience of being a primary caregiver for someone battling and recovering from breast cancer.
The poems, titled ‘Homeland’ and ‘Laburnum,’ delve into the emotional landscape of caregiving, highlighting both the challenges and the profound moments of connection that arise during this journey.
The poems may resonate with many, offering insight and empathy to those who find themselves in similar roles.
there is salt in us; everything drifts past
this present
like the trams that the government
disowned
on the wall, a painting – a cat and half eaten apples;
a pair of white eyes, no eyelash
only a tired smile of an evening tram returning
to the terminus
white linens, a waiting chair
to bid time
a clock ticking somewhere
we have upturned mountains, cut the trees,
sold off city walls
I observe
how each burnt drop
of chemo infusion seeks a cure
in your riverine body, now drying up
in each drop, a morning prayer
At the end of it all, we are walking
through April: a burnt month
like overdone toasts, election campaigns and laburnum –
the perfect hints for our follies to believe
too much in natural justice.
With a hot yawn above our head in April,
two thousand twenty-four, we meet again
in a hospital, Dolma Wangmo,
when all the yellow laburnum trees in the city
are burning. For no reason.
There is no god in the dry air,
in Calcutta, near a private hospital.
I go near your bed. You seem framed
in the cabin like a fragile painting,
you brighten up. Like a living room
on a hot summer afternoon - warm
and breezy, in Nineteen hundred eighty-nine,
the year of excess and ecstasy.
You rise with difficulty and sit
on the edge of your bed, smiling: as if a woman stuck
in adolescence, as if you are about to play
some intriguing games again, Janet. Say,
reverse charades.
You look at my eyes like a surveyor
of breaking waves
on a remote shoreline while the nurse warns you
to take it easy. It is natural for you.
I know you are always happy to see me.
But nineteen hundred eighty-nine
is not two thousand twenty-four.
Everything changes between two hot April
afternoons. The world can be easily divided
into five uneven slices without any reason.
Dolma Wangmo, you seem pale,
hands trembling. They are as slender
as an artist. You are not an artist, Dolma Wangmo.
You are an impossible romantic,
life’s favourite actor.
I wish I could bring some laburnum
from this yellow April, two thousand twenty-four.
The visit will be over in the next ten minutes.
So many things always remain unsaid,
Dolma Wangmo! I find a joyful nerve dancing on
the left side of your forehead.
I lean forward, my empty hands hold
your empty hands.