Two Indian Canadian Poems

A photograph of a piano keyboard shot from one end — Photo by Geert Pieters / Unsplash.com

Tranströmer

The tea almost gone
from our cups Ulla
took off her glasses
Said she met Tomas Tranströmer
in his house in Sweden
Schubert was playing
The moment he appeared
she’d bowed almost genuflected
as if a saint walked in The smile
on his lightly embarrassed
face betrayed nothing about
the recently lost hat and
the stroke he had suffered
which left parts of the body
paralyzed Schubert kept playing
cooling the room
until the host turned
the radio off
got himself wheeled to the well-
lit corner and played for her
the piano with his left hand

Not Absence of Body

Not absence of body but its celebration
My soul is a milky way of images swallowed
and gulped It moos
sometimes malfunctions
Parallel lines of border guards and refugees
knock on its soft door
At times a sudden yeti
stands on it barefoot
Every afternoon it is a warm bee
buzzing
ancestors—helpful guides
and pure obstacles

So much about it still
an enigma The way it cleanses itself with long-dead
languages In its tiniest room
prayer

I doubt my soul
has hair or calcium But it must be
a mammal It sweats the nights I think
I pretty much deciphered the world

Mostly it is sad
but when my soul is happy
it is happy as a well-
aged father running
toward the rusty gate
to hug the child who after thirty
years has returned home

Jaspreet Singh’s short pieces have appeared in Granta, Brick, Walrus, Zoetrope, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and the New York Times. He is the author of the poetry collections November and How to Hold a Pebble; the novels Helium, Chef, and Face; the story collection Seventeen Tomatoes; and the memoir My Mother, My Translator. Dreams of the Epoch and the Rock, his newest book, will be published this fall.