Sukha

Brockenhurtst Hospital, Brockenhurtst, 1915

Perhaps, they were mere bodies,
once-upon narratives to me.
What would you call
the dryness that comes
to palms too wet
from scooping drenched,
chocolate-bodied,
soldiered-bodied
bodies from trench slush.
Bodies.

I see remnants
of dying, sit
on twisted coat-hangars,
reside in dull, green-woollen socks,
bodies with shrapnel
smiling from throats,
bayonets shredding echoes
of the only silence
possible in wet trenches,
bodies too abstract, and
sack like,
to be called bodies.

They were bodies to me –
because that way
I could know a god who was a neutral.
Son, my mother had said, the source
of light determines where
the tunnel opens.

In fighting and dying, we were supposed to
be our equally disillusioned selves.
But look at me,
neither Hindu, nor Muslim, I seek
consummation, and space
in a church
graveyard – death
not the truant leveller
it was supposed
to be. I wish
I too was more than a body to you –
amounting to something, anything more.