In Honor of Those Who Marched: 1-19-2018

From the poet Tishani Doshi
EVERYTHING BELONGS ELSEWHERE (2013)

Ode to the Walking Woman

Sit —

you must be tired

of losing yourself

this way:

a bronzed rib 

of exhaustion

thinned out

against the night.

          Sit —

there are still things

to believe in

like civilizations

and birthing

and love.

And ancestors

who move 

like silent tributaries

from red-earthed villages

with history cradled

in their mythical arms.

        But listen,

what if they swell

through the gates

of your glistening city?

Will you walk down

to the water’s edge,

immerse your feet

till you can feel them

dancing underneath?

Mohenjo Daro’s brassy girls

with bangled wrists

and cinnabar lips;

turbaned Harappan mothers

standing wide

on terra-cotta legs;

egg-breasted Artemis —

Inanna, Ishtar, Cybele,

clutching their bounteous hearts

in the unrepentant dark, crying:  Daughter,

why have the granaries

and great baths disappeared?

Won’t you resurrect yourself,

make love to the sky,

reclaim the world?