Reincarnation Ghazal – a poem by Shalmi Barman

Reincarnation Ghazal

Willing suspension between the then and now:
a lovers’ game, ingenious then and now.

Sitar strings tuned taut. From straining steel
slip melodies unseen till then, or now.

Our fingertips forecast. These gestures raise
the wrinkles of routine, of then and now.

What past cannot be written as prologue?
I only had nineteen years then. And now?

Unspooling into you, I press rewind.
Fused, we splitscreen into then and now.

Flickering oriole calling to a mate
hears threshers. A machine makes then of now.

Sal groves fragrant for the axe have known
what riddling poets mean: what’s then is now.

Shalmi Barman is a literary scholar, an editor, and a Pushcart-nominated poet. Originally from Calcutta, India, she earned a PhD in English from the University of Virginia after writing a dissertation on class and labor in Victorian fiction. Her poetry has been featured in EcoTheo Review, Naugatuck River Review, New Verse Review, Boudin, Rat’s Ass Review, Blue Unicorn, and elsewhere.