Travelling Long to Inform a Friend’s Death by Aditya Shankar | Poetry

Poetry – Issue 8 | February 2010

Travelling Long to Inform a Friend’s Death

by Aditya Shankar

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.

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. His first book, After Seeing, is a series of poems based on cinema. Currently, he lives and works in Cochin as the Creative Director of D3V Games, a game and animation development studio. He writes in English and Malayalam, and has published poetry and articles in numerous places, including The Little Magazine.

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Literary Bohemian

Poetry – Issue 8 | February 2010