In Memoriam Sam Stafford*

 ‘…those you will efface I have loved.’ —Agha Shahid Ali

The minute the bullet pierced his face

the sky so moon-flooded collapsed into a rhapsody

and the city swales swelled with lilac wildflowers—

it was a winter of untameable fire

and bitter nostalgia, brother

in our turn, we funnelled into history like

canvassed nights through slimy skylines, or

dreams of xewali flowers on porcelain August afternoons.

Look: we torched all that was left of the untended dragnets

we jeered at the dead river, rotten-pineapple black

we scrubbed clean the timeworn mildewed dirges

we razed heaven until its flotsams became plaques—

Yet, the minute the bullet pierced his face

Time’s desultory thrusts hurried towards its cobalt shadows

and watched his frothy mouth snap into a palette of meat

and his body into a russet–haired mannequin— icy stiff

and frayed, overwound by fervid songs of Bishnu Rabha

and Jyoti Prasad to the bleeding pleats of the night—

When the tanned soil got soaked with unfathomable grief and

his sharp shriek scooted through the wet warrens of amnesia,

a sweltering avalanche of convulsing springs crashed by

a lot of clean history and landed on 855 buried headstones,

a fiery bunch. But, Sam walked away with slow gait through

a celadon street while those of us who stayed wintered in woe.

(for Mamoni Stafford)

*Sam Stafford was a 17-year-old kid who were killed in Assam by the police during the Anti-CAA protests; Xewali flower: Night-blooming Jasmine; Bishnu Rabha and Jyoti Prasad (Agarwala): renowned cultural figures from Assam; 855: reference to 855 martyr of the Assam Movement (1979-1985)