Spring Issue: Poems on Children and Childhood

Mothers—Rakhi Dalal

An under-construction building,

right next to the edges of a city,

starts slowly taking shape.

Day labourers work non-stop.

The crusher whirs tirelessly,

as they haul bags

of concrete on their heads

and tread back and forth.

A young mother,

hauling rows of bricks, stops

to look at her crying child,

lying alone in a makeshift cradle,

coos softly

and moves on.

The machine whines,

the child cries,

and goes on crying.

In a high rise building,

not far away,

a birthday cake

is being cut

amidst uproar of kids.

A mother carries glasses of soft drink

in an air conditioned room,

full of smiling guests.

She stops

to look at her child, smiles

and continues attending her guests.

The music player

plays blaring songs in the background,

all the kids laugh

and dance merrily.

Only Child— Candice Louisa Daquin

I’m sitting in a linoleum room with ghosts, specters and occasional stranger

a girl with long legs like a foal, is pulling elastic pink gum from her full mouth.

I wonder if I have ever sat so evenly in a chair, if I ever had peach hair, light on my skin like that

my friend who competed in gymkhanas, we made up pretend horses and we ran

so fast our hearts thundered up her grandmother’s hill in the La Roque-Gageac

her legs were like those of a foal, even at eleven, the waiters watched her with wet lips

What men must think when underage girls begin to fruit…

My ghosts routinely told me, I am without worth, I disappoint myself

by not belonging in this American world, where women are proud to work sixty-hour weeks

and go the gym at 9pm, still feeling they haven’t worked hard enough.

I think I am forever running in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine, with my imaginary horse

watching a girl turn into a woman.

The specters mock my lack of confidence, whispering in my detached earlobe

nobody likes a wuss, confidence is the American calling card, haven’t you noticed?

I lost a ring once you had given it to me when we were 14 and I didn’t have coltish legs

or peach fuss on my skin, but rather, the strong bones of a kid who drank milk with her cereal and got a stomach ache, reading Asterix at the pine breakfast table, with her stuffed toys.

I can still hear the plastic clock and hum of the washing machine

a warm symphony of my childhood, as I delayed leaving for school

and the inevitable crush of humanity, I had long decided was not for me.

That kitchen clock would change day and month

but never really the precision of its emptiness.

Often, a stranger would ask; why are you playing outside so late?

I would run away into the eclipsing shadows

behind corrugated iron fences that separated good neighborhood from skeletons

those bombed, bleached, bones of former homes

where a kid of twenty, years ago had lain watching paper airplanes cycle

above their head, clutching something with glass eyes and faux fur, as I still did.

I knew then how different I was; how quiet pain, how loud silence.

It was among the lost in forest, I claimed my place

when promises became paper envelopes containing no letter

leaving my scuffed shoes at the door; I climbed into the ivy, away from the party

a reflection I see of myself; gathering stillness like a blanket

she is fetching her best smile for the emptiness of years

staring into emulous clouds, watching for signs and miracles and unspent words

rinsing through tall green shadows, like echoes of

someone else’s life.

Child play—Rituparna Sengupta

All children are poets

until they quit the habit

of reaching for butterflies

that are not there.

 —Dunya Mikhail

He flaps his arms

And cranes his neck

Cooing his content

His downy head

Turns sharply around—

My nephew is a bird

He wobbles gently

On his stomach

Patting the bed

And kicking the air

To swim across it—

My nephew is a fish

He bends in sleep

Arms spread out

One leg folded

Lips suckling

On buried roots—

My nephew is a tree

He clutches his hand

Twists it around

Keenly observing it

For its meaning

And all that it can do—

My nephew is an artist

He nestles in our arms

And quietens down

Trusting the rhythm

Of another heart

To soothe his crying need—

My nephew is a lover

He sighs softly

Into the distance

Drawing his world closer

With a gaze intent

To release it all in a dream—

My nephew is a poet.

Rituparna Sengupta is a writer, literary translator, and scholar of literature and culture. She mostly writes essays and translates poetry, and rarely writes a poem. Her published work can be read here.

All the Children of My World—by Adnan Kafeel ‘Darwesh’ translated by Rituparna Sengupta

They’ll gather one day to play together

And scribble on those squeaky-clean walls

With their pencil stubs

They’ll chatter with the dogs

The goats

The grasshoppers

And the ants as well

Wildly they’ll run around

Under the constant chaperonage of the wind and the sun

And slowly, the earth

Will keep spreading around their feet….

You’ll see!

They’ll fill up your tanks with sand one day

And your guns

They’ll bury deep in the earth

They’ll make potholes in the roads and fill them up with water

And splash around in the puddles

One day, they’ll learn to love all those

Whom you’ve taught them to hate

One day they’ll pierce your walls

Try to see through them

And shout out at once,

‘Look! The season over there is just like ours!’

Then they’ll want to feel the wind and the sun on their cheeks

And you won’t be able to stop them that day

One day, the children will step out of your sheltered houses

And make nests on trees

They’ll want to grow up with the squirrels they love so

And you’ll watch as they turn everything upside down

To make it all the more beautiful

One day, all the children of my world

Will take the ants and the worms

The rivers and the mountains

 The seas and the forests

Along with them

To lay their siege

And they’ll transform all that you’ve built

Into their playthings

Translator’s Note: ‘Child Play’ was inspired by my six-month-old nephew, Rishi, to whom I also dedicate my translated poem, ‘All the Children of My World’. The former is my reflection on the child as I see him today and the latter, a wish for who he might grow up to be. Though the writing of one poem and the translation of the other were not undertaken simultaneously, now that I read the poems together, I notice their common themes of play and freedom—the rightful domain of all children, everywhere. Both poems are also ultimately meditations on humanity’s hope for meaningful regeneration, which depend in no small measure on the poetic possibilities of children’s capacity for imagination and defiance of order and convention.

Adnan Kafeel ‘Darwesh’ is the author of two poetry collections, Thithurte Lamppost (Rajkamal Prakashan, 2022) and Neeli Bayaaz (Rajkamal Prakashan, 2024). His poems have been published in many Hindi literary magazines and websites and translated into Bangla, English, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, and Odia. Among the several awards he has won for his writing, are the Bharat Bhushan Agrawal Puraskar (2018), Ravishankar Upadhyay Smriti Kavita Puraskar (2018), and Venugopal Smriti Kavita Puraskar (2019-2020). He is currently working on his PhD on early twentieth-century Hindi-Urdu poetry at Jamia Milia Islamia. ‘Meri Duniya Ke Tamaam Bachhe’ appears in his debut collection, Thithurte Lamppost (Shivering Lampposts).

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