Poem

Sridala Swami

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TESTAMENT

From you I learnt
to winnow words
give them room to breathe
silence in which to grow
grass-wild.

A single flower
at a difficult summer’s end
will bloom fiercely
and for a long time.

Sridala Swami

(India, 1971)

The poetry of Sridala Swami, a Hyderabad-based writer, is a chiaroscuro of meaning and shadow, clarity and obliquity. A distinctive feature is its capacity for emotional restraint and self-containment. These poems do not strain after effect. They do not reach for easy drama, or overt emotionality. And yet, even as they oscillate between aloofness and ardour, between the laconic and the lyrical,...

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Poems of Sridala Swami

TESTAMENT

From you I learnt
to winnow words
give them room to breathe
silence in which to grow
grass-wild.

A single flower
at a difficult summer’s end
will bloom fiercely
and for a long time.