Poem of the week: Find Me by Shanta Acharya

Find Me

In a kid refugee’s orphaned eyes, find me.
In the regular committedness of sunrise, find me.

Soldiers rescue an aged woman, a container of bones
trapped successful rubble, calling retired to the skies: Find me.

Women and children vanish without a trace.
In their helpless, anguished cries, find me.

Surveying the desolation of ruined lives
successful forsaken cities of grief the upwind sighs, find me.

In voices rising from shallow graves, souls cry,
emerging similar a flutter of butterflies, find me.

Unheard, unrepresented, they past similar seeds
praying successful cracks of abandoned high-rise, find me.

In stories buried successful the bones of exiles,
forgotten successful the annals of history’s lies, find me.

The rhythms of grief and the rhythms of anticipation coexist successful galore of the poems successful Shanta Acharya’s caller collection, Dear Life. In Find Me, they alternate successful the speedy gasps and strings of melody carried by the question from couplet to couplet, successful the pauses created by punctuation and line-ending, and successful the embedded gems of the rhyme-scheme (“sunrise”//”skies”//”cries”// “sighs”// “butterflies”// “high-rise”// “lies”).

The galore “forsaken cities of grief” the poem inhabits beryllium some to contiguous and humanities time. Shifts of position successful the scenes we’re shown reflector processes of devastation and tentative renewal. In the archetypal stanza, we statesman by looking down into “a kid refugee’s orphaned eyes”, past absorption upwards and outwards to “the regular committedness of sunrise”. The “voices” successful stanza 5 are “rising from shallow graves” and, betwixt the penultimate stanza and the last, our regard travels down from the “cracks of abandoned high-rise”, wherever seed-like souls cling to survival, towards “the bones of exiles” wherever hidden stories are inactive to beryllium found.

Stanza 1 establishes the affectional question betwixt debased and high, grief and hope, and the opposition indispensable to the repetition-centred vitality of Acharya’s chosen form, the ghazal. A enigma excessively begins to beryllium felt – the individuality of the dependable that utters the radif – “find me”. In the archetypal enactment it emanates from the unspeaking, desolate regard of the parentless child. In the second, however, the talker whitethorn beryllium invisible, oregon hidden successful the elliptical condemnation structure. “In the regular committedness of sunrise, find me.”

In stanza 2 there’s intelligibly a circumstantial voice: the italicised plea, “Find me”, is that of the gaunt aged pistillate who, arsenic “a container of bones” is herself opening to lucifer the rubble successful which she has agelong been trapped. The operation “bag of bones” is simply a colloquial, acquainted one, but it’s a visually effectual prime here. The starving pistillate is rescued by soldiers: little fortunate are the “women and children” who “disappear without a trace”. It seems their cries are returning with their un-reclaimable bodies to soil oregon soil. A absorption connected pistillate protagonists present mightiness suggest a feminist accent successful the poem, but the breadth of compassion infusing the poems of Dear Life suggests that the “women and children” and “old woman” successful Find Me are figures that merge successful a signifier of synecdoche, embracing each guiltless victims of disaster, warfare and exile.

Stanza 4 becomes a small, unpeopled code poem, successful which lone the upwind speaks. In the fifth, souls instrumentality connected their accepted form, freshly enlivened arsenic “a flutter of butterflies”. The winged “seeds” springiness them a biologic unit beyond the mythical. From seeds, the poem turns to “stories” – which, similar poems, incorporate the powerfulness to unfurl and uncover identities, adjacent if the “bones of exiles” are seemingly “forgotten successful the annals of history’s lies”. The bones themselves garbage their soundlessness successful this powerful, defiant conclusion.

The ghazal is traditionally a emotion poem, and 1 of the form’s requirements is the last disclosure of the writer-lover’s identity. Acharya rejects the normal and sustains the enigma she has truthful enticingly created. I americium blessed simply to perceive the voice, a haunting insistent voice, changing its individuality arsenic the poem unfolds. At the aforesaid time, my imaginativeness is drawn successful the absorption of the book’s guiding principle, the aggravated condemnation of life’s “dearness” and cardinal value. Acharya’s religion, influenced by Hinduism, is not 1 of dogma, nor adjacent continuous certainty, but I consciousness we are adjacent to proceeding it talk successful Find Me, with a dependable demanding look done enacted love. It asks to beryllium recovered successful each the stanzas of this poem, and passim the pages of the collection.