As we remember and rethink our country’s history and the story of the Komagata Maru, Canadian poet Renee Sarojini Saklikar shares a poem from her book, children of air india.
C-A-N-A-D-A: in the after-time, always, there is also the-before-
June 23, 1985
punctured, probed
embedded
sediments—
other peoples’ stories
cracks within cracks,
tales, anecdotes
gossip, family legends
tied knots other peoples’ stories twist
in N’s left gut, nation, in her, a body of provinces
when she walks down to the river
each story-bit
a laceration
inside her deep down
secrets
dismembered
one limb after another—
incident as saga, saga as tragedy,
tragedy as occurrence
so what a plane explodes
so what people die, they die every day
in her body, blast and counter blast
(Air India Flight 182)
her story and the stories of other people
interact—a toxin?
Alloy, mixed suffering:
name the Ukraine, find the Doukhobors, ferret out head taxes,
also, Cambodia, Ireland,
the bombing of Britain,
Guernica, Dresden,
Gaza, Afghanistan,
Khymer, Ararat, all such entries in any such list, incomplete,
Auschwitz (shush, shush)
each name
releases vibrations
Komagata Maru
Internment and confiscation
words tremble
into this cornered saga, a litter
suppressing action,
an accumulation—
and there is N, down at the river—
lumber on the docks, metals underground
salmon on the pier,
how the dates, such flies, buzz
1888-1910-1945-1947-1967-1985
also, add 1907, 1911, 1914, 1962, 1997
and after,
scandal and song
rise up, Air India, portal,
the river, a conduit,
each comer’s story
a stain on a shack, lean-to, split-level house, hall, lodge,
grocery mart, train station, bridge, railroad,
condo tower, Skytrain tracks
emanating messages—hoarded in hoax nation,
a taking and-a-taking, this country
receiver of peoples, and always underneath, the everlasting story—
this is how we suffered
list each band, tribe, linguistic group, hereditary chief
no accounting with those names, not released to her
because not student enough, not seeker enough
not listener enough, each tale incoming
woven unending saga,
citizens,
settlers,
first nations,
neighbours,
families, loners,
saints, thieves,
liars and fine upstanding sons and daughter
receptacles
holding, holding,
C-A-N-A-D-A,
once she sang—
From R. Saklikar, Children of Air India, un/authorized exhibits and interjections (Nightwood Editions, 2013).
Renée Sarojini Saklikar writes thecanadaproject, a life-long poem chronicle that includes poetry, fiction, and essays. Work from thecanadaproject appears in literary journals, newspapers, and anthologies. The first completed series from thecanadaproject is a book length poem, children of air india, (Nightwood Editions, 2013) about the bombing of Air India Flight 182, nominated as a finalist for the BC Book Prizes’ Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Read our interview with Renée Sarojini Saklikar here.
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