KNOW ME BY MY TRUE NAME

AN ETERNAL PART OF ALL - NO BEGINNING AND NO ENDING

I am the feminine consciousness who sits on a veranda hut sipping tea

I am the children playing and laughing on the field stretched out before me

I am the barefoot women walking home with firewood bundles on their heads

I am the villagers exploding firecrackers and walking beside a cart with a body for
cremating on the same field

I am the parents of a beautiful teenage girl who has committed suicide

I am that dead teenage girl wrapped in white muslin

I am the heart-mind-soul-spirit of all inter-generational pain

I am the soul that feels, understands and acknowledges a bottomless pit of

subjective universal cosmic pain

I am the voice that cries out in song from a depth I do not know
shattering the wretched sobbing and stretching towards infinity

I am the forest, firewood and match

I am the spark, flame and all consuming fire

I am the ash floating over the field

Know me by my true name …

I am an eternal part of all with no beginning and no ending in the cosmic

and human play of life and death; the life/death in every moment.

In every breath I bow my head in reverence, awe and wonder.

Know me by my true name.

Janneke Punt van Linden

Tamil Nadu, South India
Published: Poetry Institute of Canada, 2009