Sukrita Paul Kumar

Fathers and Sons

To be on this side
of the chasm,
with you on the other,
son, is a lie.

Riding separate horses,
the widening gap;
you and I
have missed
the joint gallop,
your nimble adolescence,
my second stirrings
and confrontations.
hate your manhood,
the affinities;

My son,
can you be seven again?
Seven, when the earth
between us
had not cracked yet.

Those lonesome columns
of unbuilt monuments,
edifices of my fatherhood,
and you, a child,
stand apart with more than
two and a half decades
between us.

In the depth of
unending nights,
I hear resounding echoes
from distant planets
echoes of the song
of togetherness

I, a father
you, my son.
Your ripeness is
incomplete,
my maturity, ashen.

My friend, I hate you.
For outpacing me,
for your flights
in freedom.

I lie in captivity
of the song
we started together.

History can be revised;

Can you father me,
my son,
see me through
my adolescence?

In the folds
of our singularities
we meet the shadow
of the other
sharing the same
permutations
and combinations
of the stars
the sun
and the moon.