THE HOUSE OF MY CHILDHOOD:DILIP
CHITRE
The house of my childhood stood empty
On a grey hill
All its furniture gone
Except my grandmother's grindstone
And the brass figurines of her gods
After the death of all birds
Bird-cries still fill the mind
After the city's erasure
A blur still peoples the air
In the colourless crack that comes before morning
In a place where nobody can sing
Words distribute their silence
Among intricately clustered glyphs
My grandmother's voice shivers on a bare branch
I toddle around the empty house
Spring and summer are both gone
Leaving an elderly infant
To explore the rooms of age
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Previously published in the collection of poems, Travelling
in a Cage, Clearing House Publications, Bombay 1980.
Dilip Chitre is a poet, fiction-writer,
playwright, painter and filmmaker. His honours, awards
and prizes include the Sahitya AKademi Award. Fellow
of The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New
Delhi, Writer-in-Residence at the Villa Waldberta, Feldafing,
Munich, National Emeritus Fellow of the Union Ministry
of Human Resource Development, New Delhi, Writer-in-Residence
and German Academic Exchange Fellow at the South Asia
Institute of the University of Heidelberg, Germany,
Prix Special du Jury at the Festival des Trois Continents,
Nantes, France , Fellow and Writer-in-Residence at the
International Writing Program of the University of Iowa,
Iowa City, Iowa. He lives in Pune and writes in Marathi
and English.Writes in English and in Marathi; also translates
either way, especially poetry. He is currently Honorary
Editor of the quarterly journal 'New Quest'(Mumbai/Pune,India)
and Honorary President of the 'Sontheimer Cultural Association'---a
folk heritage foundation in Pune, India.