Line Drawn & Redrawn / Eugene Datta

A man drumming his fingers on
the back of an empty begging bowl

in Kolkata, all smiles, head bobbing
to the beat. On Old Arbat Street

in Moscow, someone stood on a block
of stone in front of the statue

of Bulat Okudzhava, local poet, long dead,
reciting poetry, hands in the pockets

of his track pants, backpack on the ground –
no one to listen to him. Later,

he sat alone listening to the busker,
an older man singing opera songs

on the other side of the street. You remember,
knowing how coarse-grained

memory is, shaped and colored by mood,
light, how full of distortions.

In the few hours you had in Phuentsholing,
you looked for the hotel where

you’d spent a night thirty years ago.
In Paro, an old man walked clockwise

around a chorten, a badge with the image of
the divine mad man pinned

to his chest, phallic symbols painted
on house fronts to bring good luck.

At the farmers’ market, Namgay said
she hoped to see you again.

Pictures, a finite number of glimpses:
life straddling memory and forgetting,

the way sunlight rode the fine line drawn
and redrawn on your skin

by air and water as you stood waist-deep
in the ocean one summer

in Normandy, your lower body numb
with cold, a hot wind lashing your chest.

Eugene Datta is the author of the poetry collection Water & Wave, which was released with Redhawk in 2024. His fiction and poetry have appeared in publications such as Common Ground Review, The Dalhousie Review, Mantis, Hamilton Stone Review, The Bangalore Review, and elsewhere. Born and raised in India, he lives in Aachen, Germany. His debut collection of stories The Color of Noon is now available from Serving House Books.