Sharing one of the poems I penned, that was selected for publication in the "The Hands We Hold", a poetry anthology in Long Island, in the year 2019. The criteria for submission of the set of poems were that that the poems had to be based on the theme of illness/cancer.
Anyhow, I initially was not sure if I want to post it (although it was already selected/ published) and as it's a sensitive topic on which I wrote and due to privacy reasons, I do not want to provide interpretations/ analysis.
I decided to post as ultimately it talks of inspiration and to keep the faith in God, no matter whichever form or faith...
Here is the poem:
The Twin
Balance
"My dear twin
sister
I always
wished Lord Christ
to come and
live inside my heart,
But instead,
He gave me a
hole in my
heart-
a congenital
heart condition:
ventricular
septal defect,
a small
chunk of tissue
missing from
the place.
And look at
you,
your left
breast closest to
your own
heart
a small
chunk of tissue,
overgrowing
voraciously-
a diagnosis
of invasive breast carcinoma.
An
imbalance, a terrible mistake,
an aberrant
error of nature
or a planned
coincidence?
one in need
and one in excess,
the
misaligned balance -
a twisted
infinity.
I visited
you in the hospital the other day,
after your
last chemotherapy,
with a soft
bunch of synthetic hair
the color
you like- dark brown,
you asked me
to arrange to offer flowers to
Lord Shiva
in the temple on your behalf,
Like the
crescent moon adorning Lord Shiva's head
beauty is
that which is not full but cut out,
like the
breast in mastectomy, you had suggested,
and I asked
you why you still
worshipped a
God who could not be one with
his ardent
devotee in times of pain,
Perhaps,
Lord Shiva should also go through
human
sufferings like my Lord Christ went,
and should
understand pain of cancer
and feel
like how it is to lose His hair
at which you
remarked with a broken smile-
If Lord
Shiva lost His hair
where would
the holy Mother Ganges go,
who is held
in Shiva's long locks,
whose
gushing pure waters quench
mankind’s
thirst on the earth?
Perhaps, if
Mother Ganges got cancer
she would
not need to worry about hair
and no one
would identify her tears
for they
would be mixed with the waters
which will
flow through Shiva’s hair
adorning his
beauty as well.
Shiva is
keeping one mother safe
In His long
locks just as Christ is keeping
one sister
safe in the palm of His hand
Which has
the hole from the cross…
Both of us
are held by the highest God
In different
ways, I realize now,
Let us
remain united in faith,
A common
cord connects both
Of our
hearts even now…."
-Shilpi
Goenka
