Mowing the Grass - A Poem by Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih

  

 

 

 

When I declined an invitation

for lunch because

I had to mow the grass,

my friends laughed.

 

‘Are you a mali, then?

Or a cattle rearer, perhaps?’

 

Mowing the grass,

trimming the trees,

weeding the flower bed,

keeping the body in shape,

filling the mind

with lovely thoughts.

 

Mowing the grass,

grooming the earth.

 

Oh, the beauty of mowing the grass!

 

Little did I know

when caged cities are flattened,

when homes and hospitals,

when schools and churches and camps

teeming with women and children

are bombed out of existence,

and the bodies of thousands

upon thousands

are blown to pieces

for the crime of some

(if fighting for freedom is a crime),

in the language of genociders,

it is merely

mowing the grass.

 

Oh, the horror of mowing the grass!

 

What devilish hand or heart

has twisted such lovely words

so devilishly out of shape?

 

*First published in Upplitt Magasin, Sweden

Bio: Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih is the winner of the Shakti Bhatt Prize 2024. A poet, novelist, dramatist, and nonfiction writer, his latest works include The Distaste of the Earth (Penguin India, longlisted for the JCB Prize 2024, and shortlisted for the Kerala Literature Festival Book of the Year Award 2024) and the epic novel Funeral Nights (Westland, India/And Other Stories, UK), which won the Professor Tabu Ram Taid Literary Award 2026. He teaches literature at North-Eastern Hill University, Shilong.

( THIS IS THE 10 th WEEK - 11 TH YEAR of BFL-  PART OF GUEST POST SERIES- POST -10)