ISABEL

Isabel

To great-great Aunt Isabel Grant, domiciled

her whole life at Kidderpore House

How can I know you
except via the mango tree?

I climb your branches
seek the uppermost fruit:

globes of burnished gold
Here you set root

immune to the swooping birds
the scrutiny of eyes

envious of your voluptuousness
Married only to your hymn of juices

Internal sun
Such sweetness

Not to be taken
Even your leaves are pungent

and branch out
in many directions

Is a bell
so redolent?

Calling forth or merely
calling out

her name?
Were it so easy to go inside

those chambers
The mango’s heart is ripe

But I can course
like a chemical messenger

seeking, like you, the goddess particle
Your labours are arduous

You are enough
unto yourself

Puja

Mother, you spoke from that part
of yourself that was wounded yet

wished to assist: to further knowledge -
humble offerings

Mushak to Ganesha,
at his feet

the scribe and
the vehicle.

I'm but a church mouse no harm
to anyone

the child could have been kept there was
no need to take them away.

As children, inheritors
you drew us elephants (never forget).

How many generations has this been so?
Removal, prostrate to an English god

women kept in a zenana
shamed from public view.

What are their names?
Say them as you would

the many names
of the Goddess

yet you knew
I love you: I know.

The Archives: Lost Objects

The archives are full of munshis and munsifs, sisters or brothers claiming pensions, widows, murderous acts, deportations, jailors, pedants, clerks, police writers. Appellants. A strange baroque world.
The criminally insane... Workhouses for the "poor".
Leprosy and lost toes
Horse handlers and gamblers... Convicts sent from Calcutta to the colony of New South Wales
Before direct rule it was totally handwritten. Depending on the year it can be legible or a hurried, indifferent scrawl.
Radha Rai prays for a memorial pension. Third time.
Bits that you read and bits that disappe...
Maybe I should be delving in the Occult or consult with an oracle instead, employ a Tantric

: lost objects :

Vek Lewis is an Australian writer of Anglo-Indian heritage. Her work has appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, Meniscus Literary Review and is forthcoming in Westerly.