Speaking in Coda

Siddharth Dasgupta

Some dreams come to me in Bangla.

I don’t know Bangla. It doesn’t seem

to matter; I know enough. The way

in which certain words bend, the shape

a mouth makes when birthing a syllable,

the transparency of melodicism—

I know enough. I think about bloodlines

often enough—the Brahmaputra,

salvaging earth from the wombs

of its deltas; the Ganga, gulping

portions of sky as a sort of Romeo

farewell. I love this world in Urdu. What

is there to love, you ask. There’s enough,

if you were to truly look. Urdu

understands, adding crunch to words

that could only mean love—lafz,

mehek, mizaaj, guzarish—the way

ruhaniyat gets to the soul of the matter,

the way taabiir wraps dreams within

the fractures of just two syllables,

how iztiraar hints at the restlessness

of the cosmos. Nothing profuse,

but enough. Break bread with me

in Farsi. Pour me some chai—

not an entire cup, just enough.

Speak to me of Tehran, of Valiasr

Street dividing the city into one

yearning valley of homes and histories.

The odd oak and a profusion

of chinar drop like autumn on my

remembrances, enough to swathe

the past in a seasonal bouquet—

not entirely, only enough. Hindi

mein yeh shaam guzar jayegi. In Hindi,

yesterday and tomorrow collide

as the same illegitimate thing. In Hindi,

the weather gets bestowed with a certain

restless romance. And in Hindi, food

tastes triumphantly delicious while love

tastes even more bitter. In quarts,

in centimetres, in just about enough.

Allow me to frolic in these tongues,

some of me illiterate, some of me

electric. Which leaves English.

Why in English, I write this poem.

An evening of delphinium somewhere

—perhaps that ought to be enough.