Right to Exist, Song for Palestine
Pramila Venkateswaran, Nassau Community College, New York
[Listen to the song here.]
Raag: Gowlai
Srim..g.r.g..g.rrs …
Fire pours molten into us
Not the sunlight that dances
On wrecks charred and smoking,
But a murderous gutting.
Ssmmggppmmrr pnsr
Ppmmgg ddppmmgg
Rrssddpp. R. Rsndg..
You are safer in death, they imply,
There are no spaces for you to thrive.
Our spirits writhe in the dark
Not ensconced holy in our skins,
But maimed and stunned
By bombs, American-made.
Ssmmggppmmrr pnsr
Ppmmgg ddppmmgg
Rrssddpp. R. Rsndg..
You are safer in death, they imply,
There are no spaces for you to thrive.
If a child’s innocence is a fable
Then the world is crippled
If truth has lost its sheen
How can we fathom the unseen?
Ssmmggppmmrr pnsr
Ppmmgg ddppmmgg
Rrssddpp. R. Rsndg..
You are safer in death, they imply,
There are no spaces for you to thrive.
If truth has lost its sheen
How can we fathom the unseen? Rep 2 times in upper octave
Srm.gr,g,,g, rrs
Rdr.g.. ( higher octave).
Pramila Venkateswaran, poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island (2013-15) and co-director of Matwaala: South Asian Diaspora Poetry Festival, is the author of Thirtha (Yuganta Press, 2002) Behind Dark Waters (Plain View Press, 2008), Draw Me Inmost (Stockport Flats, 2009), Trace (Finishing Line Press, 2011), Thirteen Days to Let Go (Aldrich Press, 2015), Slow Ripening (Local Gems, 2016), The Singer of Alleppey (Shanti Arts, 2018) and We are Not a Museum (Finishing Line Press, 2022). Winner of the New York Book Festival award, she has performed her poetry internationally, including at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival and the Festival Internacional De Poesia De Granada. She teaches English and Women’s Studies at Nassau Community College, New York. Author of numerous essays on poetics as well as creative non-fiction, she is also the 2011 Walt Whitman Birthplace Association Long Island Poet of the Year. She is the President of Suffolk NOW.
