Leaf by leaf.
The Arithmetic of AdditionWhile working out the arithmetic of addition,
one day I looked around
and saw mountains of power.
Buried beneath them, crushed to death,
lay a tiny, insignificant me.
Seeing this,
my own eternal trellis of Malabar spinach
covered its mouth
and quietly laughed.
________________________________________
The Arithmetic of Subtraction
While working out the arithmetic of subtraction,
one day I looked at the page of my household
and found that nothing remained
that could still be called me.
Everything was new, everything was pure,
the sky was generous and boundless,
the fields stretched to the horizon,
and at the corner of my lips
clung, ever so lightly,
a Baul song.
________________________________________
The Arithmetic of Broken Stairs
The more I give myself
to this arithmetic of broken stairs,
the more shards of broken glass
gather all around me.
My entire body is cut,
blood running freely.
I look at my face in the mirror
and cannot recognize
the mug staring back at me.
________________________________________
This War
In the heat of life's additions and subtractions,
the door to the sanctum
has already burned away.
Now, riding upon the chariot
of broken-stair arithmetic,
I have entered the battlefield
without shield or sword.
This war, that war,
one war after another,
a war where there is
neither victory nor defeat,
only the struggle
that continues.
________________________________________
A Happy Household
Well, how wonderful.
Now I understand.
A happy household
is seen far more often
in stories and novels
than it is in real life.
________________________________________
After the Gathering
After arguing at length
with friends over theories and facts,
I look down
and find, lying inside the teacup,
the cold body
of a social revolution.
________________________________________
The Leaves
When leaves dry up,
the tree shakes them off.
Every leaf knows this.
How strange that, for the tree,
they harbor no remorse.
Why should they?
By then,
they have already become
friends with the earth.
Poetry by sinha murari
Written on 2026-09-21 at 01:42
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