Travelling Long to Inform a Friend’s Death
The task on hand is easy;
Search for a lane where
the air is rusty and bleeding
by the long absence of a beloved son.
Spot the house with
walls like long-lost childhood;
newly grown mosses fighting against
skewed alphabets, inverted numerals
and memories of a young child.
Look for a father waiting with that favourite dish,
compensating the extra spice with a face full of
smile and moustache.
Hear the silence of the bird’s long-lost song,
of toys tied up in trees
and the marbles that reappear from the soil.
The task on hand is easy;
walk back like yet another stranger,
knocking on the wrong doors
in this scorching heat of summer.
About the author
Aditya Shankar is originally from Kerala, India, and is a bi-lingual writer and film-maker whose short films have garnered him nominations for animation awards.…
Read the full bioIssue 08 · February 2010
Table of contents
- From the editors
- Poetry
- Lisbon Holds a Prisoner One Night
- Postcard from Texas
- Four poems by Mahogany L. Browne
- Three Poems by Michael Bazzett
- Travelling Long to Inform a Friend’s Death
- Train Ride to Zagreb
- Two poems by Stephen Bunch
- Gavage (and the Stress of Flying These Days)
- Then
- Two Poems by Jon Sands
- Two poems by Neil McCarthy
- Two poems by Sue Burge
- Summer is
- Two poems by Sheila Wild
- Two poems by Susanna Rich
- Postcard Prose
- Travel Notes