Aubade for Mountains

by Sneha Subramanian Kanta

Massimiliano Morosinotto

Two tectonic plates collide to form a mountain. I evoke topography by calling out to you: parbat, parvat, pahad*. I inherit the rhythm of puh

from a derivative of sa, re, gaa, maa, pa from the saat swar*. My mother is half-Himalayas, half-Vindhyas, the mulberry part of mountains. My father is a trail between a point of fold mountains, a migration womb in the valley of flowers, the calligraphy of light over mountain ranges.

I smell the mountain range as a forest of frangipanis. A river cascades into the valley where animals arrive with conjoined thirsts. The bones of my ancestors flow along its tributaries. Praise the sediment of soil, the urn of our throats, a mountain feeding entire villages. Praise rivers with their filigree banks that transcend borders. Praise the quiet stream of molasses in the bodies of fruits in summer, their ripening longitudes.

A mountain is: a prayer for rain on a parched land. A burst of flowers in springtime falling as eulogies for lost bones. A wingless elliptical soaring toward an ether. The prospect of a silken eternity, formless, taking new shapes as shadows in the expanse of a day. A rite of passing as the hamsa.* There are as many paths to an entrance in the mountain as the numberless birds that fly across its lengthening hem. The pasture of a meadow that gleams in the sun when shadows of clouds trail southward. A settling fog.

When deodars beckon rain, an incense lingers in the air. Give me snow as a relic for slumber. I collect berries from the mountain, pestle them into another form of giving. A wreath of flowers collecting beside a mountain river undoes the boundary of land. My mother arches like the slant bend of light in the Yamuna, knitting roses into blobs of thread. My father sits on the banks of the Ganges reciting names of our dead. A shadow-mist meanders over Kanchenjunga. A mountain will last longer than our eulogy.

---

Sneha Subramanian Kanta has been awarded the first Vijay Nambisan Fellowship 2019. She is a recipient of The Charles Wallace Fellowship 2019–20 at The University of Stirling, Scotland. She is the founding editor of Parentheses Journal and reader for Palette Poetry and Tinderbox Poetry. Her chapbook Ghost Tracks is forthcoming with Louisiana Literature Press (Southeastern Louisiana University).