The Lisbon Consortium Book Club

From: Anne Fisher-Wirth, and Laura-Gray Street. 2025. Attached to the Living World: A New Ecopoetry Anthology. San Antonio, Texas: Terra Firma Books. 

Grandma played me her garden song

During the shallow heat of springtime

She beat her palms against the soil

Caressed the dirt-laced scrapes on my knees,

jewels of transcontinental sweat lined her bosom

as she hacked up furtive weeds

Granny licked her peeling sugarcane lips

They parted, and forth sprung an aria of flowers

There were whole land masses dropping from her hands

breathing soul into fragrant coriander and parsley

ballads of San Juan and Mississippi, West Africa

reconciled in Sunday dew-kissed grass

Look how the slender spines of lilac

bow to the sunflower’s sullen crowns

just yards away, a squash blossoms

Swan song wanes toward summer

She sat in the cool shade, mint leaves whistling 

Her back creaking

Like slave ships on salted ocean

She’s found ways to harvest her own skin

Ripe like wild bananas

Slow and deliberate 

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Lugun, Anuj. 2024. Rupkatha Translation Project 2024: Selected Poems of Anuj Lugun. Translated by Pragya Shukla. Rupkatha Books.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/384332949_RUPKATHA_BOOKS_SELECTED_POEMS_OF_ANUJ_LUGUN

Preparing Lakhtho at Home

Sometimes wheat flour found its way home

Sometimes sugar graced our kitchen

Sometimes there was oil in stock

Ma sometimes prepared Lakhtho at home

My sister danced with joy

And brothers fought

Maa would quietly prepare the batter

Deftly rolling and cutting

We would look at mother’s fingers at work

Father picking up the hadiya mug would remark

‘No one can ever prepare like her— ‘

Back then, we believed Maa was preparing Lakhtho

But only Maa knew that

With borrowed flour

And borrowed sugar

And borrowed oil

She was making home

We were unaware then

Now the truth is out

Maa always made home

And never Lakhtho

(Lakhto: indigenous sweet dish. Hadiya: rice beer)

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Putul, Nirmala. 2022. The Echoes of Tribal Times. Translated by Anup Singh Beniwal. dialog, No. 39 (Spring, 2022) 290-307.

https://dialog.puchd.ac.in/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/The-Echoes-of-Tribal-Times-Anup-Beniwal.pdf

A Hill Woman

I

She –

Who is coming down the hill,

Balancing a bundle of fire-wood on her head –

A hill woman,

Would presently go to the market

And sell the entire lot

To quench the belly-fire of the entire family.

Lugging the sheet-wrapped child on her back

This paddy-sowing hill woman

Sows her mountain-like-grief

Hoping to reap a bumper crop of happiness

In Breaking rock, she breaks

Hilly restrictions and taboos

Weaving straw-mates on the hills

She confronts the hill-heavy day

In making brooms, she forges

Weapons to fight the dirt

Putting a flower in her bun

She pierces the heart of someone

Running after cows and goats

Her feet etch

Thousand primeval songs on this earth.

VII

Come, Let’s Save it

Our settlements

From stripping

From the climes of the town

Save the entire settlement

From drowning

In hadia

On our faces

The earthiness of Santhal division

The Jharkhandiness of our speech

Also, the warmth of life

In the coldness of our routines

The fecundity of mind

The innocence of hearts

The arrogance, the persistence too

The fire within

The string of the bow

The sharpness of the arrow

The edge of the axe

The fresh air of the forest

The purity of rivers

The silence of the mountains

The melogy of the songs

The earthiness of soil

The swaying of crops

An open courtyard to dance

A song to sing

A little laughter to laugh

And a fistful of solitude to weep

Playfield for children

Pastures for the cattle

Peace of the mountains for the elderly

And in these times of disbelief

A little belief

A little hope

And some dreams

Let’s save these together

For there is have still much left

For us to protect in these times

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