making less of the body / worlding: the swallowing of green light

            the thin fog of a season’s turn / pungent fragrance in Epping, nineteen

                        translation as a means for survival / terrestrial seeking what-has-been

fleshy fibres separating skin / roots of blood-current

            veins / moss glimpsed through protective barriers, your thin skin

                        masquerading parchment / felled branch landing into a blueprint

new reckonings through the smell of birch / deodar-song or.

            brief loss, trying not to count / mapping leaves & dull brown 

                        collateral damage we could never unsee / overhead, turned down

some forests remind you of other ones / existing in myth

            & song / remember the thirteen-year-exile that the five brothers lived

                        & two women / hidden & lacquer-painted, switched & mimicked

it was a kind of healing perhaps to live other lives / shadowy endurance

            I imagine tropical summers yellow & hot / pouring through oak and pine

                            sap remembers everything / vernalisation of negations & shrines

we could (n)ever? / think corporeal. paddle downforest

            luminescent glimmer of presence / cool lungs & a wren singing

                        collapse into the familiarity of hand-holding / my dear it is composing

The reference to the ‘five brothers and two women’ is an allusion to the story of the Pandavas, from the Mahabharata (a Sanskrit epic poem). These allusions are to various events that occur in the tale, such as when the Pandavas escape a lacquer-painted (and thus highly flammable) palace. ‘Switched and mimicked’ alludes to one of the brothers cross-dressing during a year in exile.

Pratyusha is an Indo-Swiss postgraduate student based in London. Her pamphlet, Night Waters, was published by Zarf Poetry in 2018. She co-edits amberflora, an eco/world poetry zine, at https://www.amberflora.com.