Three Poems of Faith and Forgetting

By Siddharth Dasgupta

Fidelities, in Time

Waiting for the sky to rip things apart

Writhing in the heat of this nameless Indian town

I write a few lines, scribble them out

I write some more, these splinters of the broken and

The healed. Hymns infiltrate the pores of our fears

Because hymns are nothing like prayers

They hold resonance for the earth and its cradled mysteries

As I write, trying to weave things back to what they used

To be. The ocean’s soliloquy consummated by shores

Sends larks and gulls crashing against the tides

Our urgency for one another hangs by threads

The persistence of light pervading these beds

We’ve raised. I used to know things, you know

Like in which direction the water will flow

Or how compulsion will react to the resistance of flight

Or how soil-loosened earth caves in on the sins of

Its flock. The religious radiance of rapture

Floods of urge that rush through our veins

Two bodies hell-bent on the salvation of angels

I write everything down, in the stuttering melody of

Vinyl-cracked rain. I dance the dance

Of a man who knows each time the weather has turned

That some things are best left on windowsills

On shelves where letters are often enough discarded

Like rain. I run wild on the skin of an empty beach

Waiting for the sky to rip things apart

Writhing in the heat of this nameless Indian town

Gathering shells, in case there’s a storm.

Istanbul Unto Ephemera | II

But for confluence, what would our cities be? Traversing

masses of land that lay claim to continental drifts, across

a strait that carries the romance of the seas, beneath the

crucial kiss of an ocean set to rhythm, and through the

lives of her people—as accustomed to paradisiacal sigh

as violence’s brutal touch—Istanbul savours the enigma.

I sit here sipping Çay, with my heart resonating to an

Asian heartbeat, its double-kettle proliferation of tea

leaves, lightly tossed, fresh water, coarsely boiled, and

singular aroma, piquantly brewed, reminding me of home

and the impermanence of cultivated faith, of how so much

of any year is bound by flowers of forgiveness. Similarly,

I browse through books and photographs in a European

frame of mind—Cihangir’s cultivated meth mysticism and

Karaköy’s erotic rush of beauty all brutal and encounters

all too brief swaying softly with these hushed footsteps of

a past draped in the arms of seven hills and the lucid

crush of paradise somewhat lost. How do you retrospect

fondly over the past when the past stretches beyond the

lines on your hands and the millions of nerves and sinews

pumping blood and bliss into your soul, as Istanbul attests,

guided by its invisible convergence of continental divides,

led by its prolific faith engaging lust and flesh in dance, thus

leaving me bloodied for more? Stay still, Istanbul, while my

eyes try to come to terms with the currents of starry-eyed

fresco, as these rooftops consent to this caressed-by-kismet

coupling of divine disco, every haunted heartbeat of yours

and mine heightened by these giddy inebriations of the truth.

With That Left-behind Stanza

Remembering is two cities.

It is your city, and it is mine.

Because what you remember,

And what I remember,

Are two entirely estranged

Addresses.

Then, perhaps, forgetting

Is two cities as well. It is

The actual forgetting,

And then, there is the

Wanting to forget.

A song on the radio.

A wildflower. A piece

Of paper, left behind

In a café, with that

Left-behind stanza

Of summers, drunk.

Postbox. Postmodern

Poetry (your guess is

As good as mine). Love,

Simmering in an ashtray,

Like the skin that lingers

Within the imperfections

Of a left-behind poem.

You’ll believe me

When I tell you that

Gathering is two cities,

It’s true—it’s what

Remains with the

Remembering, after you’ve

Subtracted everything

That there is

To forget.     

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Siddharth Dasgupta is an Indian Poet & Novelist. His poetry & fiction have appeared in the Kyoto Journal, Lunch Ticket, Poetry at Sangam, Spittoon, Cha, Madras Courier, the Bombay Literary Review, and elsewhere. Off-and-on, he also dives into elements of travel and culture for a gathering of well-regarded publications—Travel + Leisure, Harper’s Bazaar, and National Geographic Traveller, included. You can find him on Instagram as @citizen.bliss and online at https://citizenbliss.squarespace.com

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