Tag: #StanSwamy

Last night, far from shore, 
and ringed by roiling water,
I sensed a gentle wind
calling me towards the shallows.
In the morning, 
I searched the papers
for some sort of hidden meaning;

they think they killed you, Stan Swamy,
but I can still hear you breathing.

Just a week ago,
my mother called to say 

my father had fallen again;
they were taking things day-by-day.

Life’s hard enough in the end,
the way we all slip and weaken—

how could they make Stan Swamy
pass his last months in prison?

The day my mother calls
to confess she’d woken in tears
(she still misses her mother, 
after so many years),
I am blessed to meet
a six-week-old baby girl;
drunk on her mother’s milk,
she smiles as she sleeps
sprawled on a charpai,
like a pehlwan
after a hard-won match.
Later that night,
I read that Stan Swamy
can no longer walk or bathe
or even feed himself,
and how he’s told the court
he does not prefer a hospital
to Taloja Jail; he prefers
to suffer and die in prison—
or to go home:
‘Whatever happens to me, 
I’d like to be with my own.’