Sahana Mukherjee is a Charles Wallace fellow at the University of Edinburgh in Creative Writing (2017). She is always trying to understand the language of silence.

Ghazal

“What longing, O Yaar, is controlled in real time?”

I’ll do now what I couldn’t in so long a time.
Tributes to you are banal after so long a time.

“This weather’s so depressing, the rain,” says nick-e
but a chainsaw-cutting-laughter during seminar time.

How far from a mosque do you keep your palms cupped
when it rains down damp rafters at prayer time?

Walls piled up, then razed in Windmill Street all day.
Such longing – for home? – O crafter, at demolition time.

Scottish railings tug at my sleeves as I leave behind
we’ll-see-each-other-some-time-after-I’m-sure time.