Border night
One night in a dream
my bed a grave
buried Monjula and others
voices muffled
in a ripe paddy field
where soldiers with guns
guard a new fence
that the black cat
ran over and over
my body alive-dead.
My dream's Monjula
lives by the river Chring
India this side
Bangladesh that
suffered deep vein thrombosis
but forgot to see the nurse
when she did
ugly wounds erupted
Villagers said
it's cancer in the leg.
But there was hope
that autumn Chring dried
Monjula's body strapped
on a bamboo stretcher
carried across
to the forty-bed hospital
doctors treated her ulcers
as they erupted
Villagers said
it's cancer in the leg.
One side of Chring
Monjula's husband James
traded news with her sister
Blood loss fluid in veins
One injection another
More money sent
Chring witness to every word
at the border
Villagers said
it's cancer in the leg.
Monjula died soon
her body travelled back
buried with her new dress
purse, comb, and toothbrush
a mud grave with a wooden cross
James did not take
another wife in the village
the Chring flows
Villagers said
it's cancer in the leg.
My dream's Monjula
speaks to me
in sleep in waking
I leave my faraway city
for the village
the Chring flows
this time soldiers with guns
hold a notebook
that villagers sign
to fetch water and bathe.
In the final settlement
on the fence
the black one across the red hills
Chring is no one's zone
Monjula's grave fenced out
Do the soldiers know?
they watch over the dead
who speak to the living
in faraway places
from a bed in a grave.
Do the soldiers know?
the year before
Domahi had malaria like ten others
died with fluid in her veins
the year before
Nobel who sold tea had tumours
the year next her husband
followed her to the grave
of illness no one knows for certain
but all think it was tuberculosis.
Do the soldiers know?
the year next
the child whose tumour moved
from hand to leg and hand again
this morning's day-old child
died said her grandmother
carrying her clothes
in a soldier's patchy rucksack
I cleaned the yard
with a new broom she said.
The night I return
unable to see Monjula
I sleep sad and sound
the Chring flows
my host possessed by a ghost
screams her shadow touches my body
but she is not from my village
frightened I turn my face away
but before I could turn to see her face
you screamed so loudly she said.
The morning after
the wise counsel
there are no ghosts
The dead rest they do not seek
And yet they speak
with jostling bodies
shadows and noise
night and day
of ignored pain moving tumors
cancer in the leg.
The fence divides land
theirs and ours
our village well on their fertile land
their fertile land our pathway to the forest
Fences-in disease fences-out graves
their dead our dying
mud graves twisted crosses
Interrupted conversations
on cancer in the leg
with soldiers of dreams and deaths.