13
Photographs of Your GrandfatherYou handed me the album,its leather cover half eaten away. I turned the stiff black pages. "Here Maharajah Sahib has come to my grandfather's house, to greet him on his sixtieth birthday." The brocade-coated Maharajah bends courteously forward, holding the old man's hands in his. He has just stepped out of a black limousine, its door still stands open. Here is the old man again, in a silk shawl and Mysore turban, surrounded by his taller, grown sons. Their bare upper bodies shine with youth. They wear identical gold necklaces, brahminic threads across their chests, silk dhotis. All gaze confidently into the camera. One of them is your father. I looked for the small boy, but you were just outside the frame, with the women, perhaps, or playing with your cousins. I had to seek you in those half-familiar faces, at ease in the world as you never were. |
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Issue #18, December, 2000 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.