A Name Is Not A Knowing Poem by Salil Chaturvedi

A name is not a knowing
You have to hug a tree
Feel its bark,
the texture of its leaves
To understand how it invents tiny capsules of desire
and puts them into seeds
with just enough wisdom
not too much
Enough to know
that the outside is the new inside
That everything that grows is life
that spaces are expanding
that too much of life is but a death
A choking point for a new beginning
and that all beginnings are old, old, old.

My sister is now mostly smoke
and some ashes
A few tiny bones on a river bed
She was gone much before she went
Now she has put the sky below me
and the earth above
On the knoll from where I can see
that peacock, Mandira.
the pink flower bushes, Mandira.
the hidden partridges, Mandira.
the pipit songs, Mandira.
the wind among the grasses, Mandira.
A name is not a knowing
You have to hug a tree.