Mithu: The Spectrum
Mithu: The Spectrum

Mithu Sen. From Elle

The morphing enchantress.

From between her teeth, floating blood wipes her hair — her ribs — her self

— like she were only kohl — not eyes. She doesn’t exist.

The blood-smog is —

clustered-reformed-hibiscuses that were rotting on trees — attached.

From the silence of a closed throat to the eruption of mad sirocco

. She doesn’t exist. She erases herself as she writes on mutating billows

She has a song as vapour as herself

— it speaks of three dots and their elaborate deskew —

to the river in the hyaline to cracking coals of the belly

from the ravenous mouth of a howling cow to hands making milk

through fenestrations comes the smoking kohl — an air to be eaten — alone

She doesn’t exist

Except as a disentanglement of herself.

Except as music found in the absence of songs.

Except as an image cast by the moonless night on the heart of a child

— yet to be born

Except as the opposite of all existence in a place

— which is an imaginary illusion of this earth

In her non-existence. She is the spectrum

The greedy/ The giver. The entertainer/The sadhoo.

The fume/ The sculpture. The inviter/ The rejector.

The poem written as a touch/ The touch written as a poem.

I find her between flashes and lose her when I search

I find her everywhere — ant sized miniatures crawling in my hair

I lose her all the time — in my mouth, up my navel

I lose her in the sparks of electricity that make this city visible at all

Firefly. Venus. Street light maybe. The train that passes by every 45 minutes but never brings a single letter/passenger home. The cloud that could be a patch stitched to hide splinters in the sky. The death.

The kohl mountain breaking into a river. The kohl cave sucking in the floods.

She doesn’t exist except as a prophecy

She doesn’t speak except in burls

She never blinks for her eyes drink the earth

She never rests for her feet are busy squishing false architectures

I write to find her — she wriggles to another page

I write to pour her — she becomes a statue instead

I write to merge our rivers — she becomes another root

She births a thousand other river mouths as I stitch myself to her flowing head.
['Shringi Kumari']
['Mithu Sen', 'Artist', 'Self', 'Poetry', 'Kohl Rivers']