‘All I ask is that it does not hurt’ and other poems

Mustansir Dalvi

All I ask is that it does not hurt

The earth, I remember, 
is an object misplaced. 

I arrived at the moment 
I became aware I was always here. 

I fit without edges sticking, 
or my skin getting scraped. 

I stay hidden. I would love too, 
I would love to love if allowed to. 

I disguise fear in anonymity: 
each morning, I wake in costume. 

Silence costs, I know. 
It exacts a toll without speaking. 

I am ready. All I ask 
is that it does not hurt. 

Sassoon Dock 

Boatmen’s knots are both foreign and wet: 
I reach out to unmoor the vessel but have neither wit 
nor dexterity to pull off this petty purloining. 

I was ready to row away to the Andamans, 
just to give back the boat its authenticity and purpose. 
I am frustrated by the obduracy of a hull 
sunk in metropolitan silt. 
I could take a blade to the knots but, 
like Alexander at the Indus, find this unfordable. 

Artists’ impressions of my potential accusers 
Scream from the walls of old warehouses: 
I told you so. 
These fisherfolk made graffiti 
convey a mea culpa far more efficiently 
than the thousand pages of an FIR. 

Kolis of Sassoon Dock, 
reduced to role-playing and petty cookery, 
live off the largesse of punters 
desirous of the umami of peasant food. 
Even the boat I seek to steal is purposefully positioned 
for scenic selfie-taking. 

You can’t steal a city back from itself. 
Melancholic eyes look down 
from brown, painted murals inside warehouses 
to confirm: I told you so. 

Tamazight – an Amaziɣ’s poem  

Sand is no longer captured 
by the litham covering our faces. 
The cloth remains unsullied 
as if never used. 
We wander the Maghreb, 
speak, and are misunderstood 
in tongues other than our own. 
Our mouths, forever dry. 
What would it be like 
if I spoke only to myself? 
What could I say? 
What sense would I make? 
My mind empties 
like one half of an hourglass, 
dripping obstinately into the other 
that is the Sahara. 
My throat is seared with longing. 
I want to tell you of the Fezzan, 
of its wadis, of its waters sweet as dates, 
of the tattoos that make our women. 
You meet me halfway, in your voice: 
every greeting, every civility 
mediated by the monoglossia 
of your shrunken world. 

Notes:  

FIR (First Information Report): In India, it is mandatory for the police to register a FIR before they can legally begin investigating any cognisable offence. 

Tamazight is the language of the Amaziɣ’s, a community formerly (and derogatorily) called the Berbers, who are found in dwindling numbers all over northern Africa. Their language is one on the border of extinction. 

Mustansir Dalvi is a poet, translator, and editor. He has three books of poems — Brouhahas of Cocks (Poetrywala, 2013), Cosmopolitician (Poetrywala, 2018) and Walk (Poetrywala, 2019/Yavanika Press, 2020). His poems are included in the anthologies Converse: Contemporary Indian Poetry in English (Sudeep Sen, editor, Pippa Rann Books, 2022) and Future Library: Contemporary Indian Writing (Anjum Hasan and Sampurna Chattarji, editors, Red Hen Press, 2022). His poems have been translated into French, Croatian, Gujarati, and Marathi. Mustansir Dalvi’s 2012 English translation of Muhammad Iqbal’s influential Shikwa and Jawaab-e-Shikwa from the Urdu as Taking Issue and Allah’s Answer (India Penguin Modern Classics) has been described as ‘insolent and heretical’ and makes Iqbal’s verse accessible to the modern reader. He is the editor of Man without a Navel, a collection of new and selected translations of Hemant Divate’s poems from the Marathi (Poetrywala, 2018). Mustansir Dalvi was born in Bombay. He teaches architecture in Mumbai.