It all started

With a big, black box that planted grey clouds over my skies.

 

Then, came rain

as I drank my memories little by little.

Numbers lost meaning,

                                                            Letters flew,

Learned note-coated words,

gathered speech,

                                     misspelled

                                                               breeze and rain.

 

One by one my lovers left

and I left a part of me with them.

 

Now my visions lost,

my voice, parched in smoke,

 

I walked

every street of my three cities

but failed to lose myself.

 

I gave my voice to the rivers,

and I gave my reason to my mountains.

I gave everything I was left with

to every song I had ever known.

 

Then came the night

and then came the moon

and then came everyone who hated me for so long.

And then came my ideals, came my reasons and how they were born.

Then came my estrangements.

 

Then came death, words began to hurt

Came uncertainty,

white hair, questions about this birth.

 

But that is how it all started

A big, black, broken radio.

Goirick lives in Delhi, He hails from Silchar, Assam. His first collection of poems ‘For the love of Pork’ have recently been published by Les Editions du Zaporogue, Denmark. He is the 2016 winner of the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize.