Monday, July 15, 2013

hawi lo par/ in the library - Baruk Feddabonn

there is a darkness in these shelves
rising from the stardust and skin
of other peoples’ memories

our memories are buried
with the ancient dead
and grow as the
hawi-lo-par

flowers of forgetting
or remembering

which?
i don’t recall



*On the way to mithi khua (land of the dead), the Mizo dead went through fields of ‘hawi lo par’ (flowers of not turning back), and drank ‘lung lo tui’ (water of no heartache). They could then pass happily into the afterlife, and no longer pine for those they left behind.


Baruk has a Mizo mother and poetry runs in the family veins like blood does in the rest of us lesser mortals.. He is a part-time librarian, wannabe crafter, drum beater, house-husband and Wing Tsun student. Born in Mizoram and and brought up in Shillong, he now lives in Auckland, New Zealand, and uses http://feddabonn.com as a creative dumping ground.


3 comments:

  1. Read this on his blog also. it is so beautiful. feels like a heavy sigh exhaled in surrender or longing or regret, i don't know which.

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  2. Baruk was born in Mizoram though he did study in Shillong.

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