Augury Birdbath

By Saanvi Lijin Dharman

“Not knowing what life is,

I do not even know whether I am the one living it

or if my life is living me.”

—Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Fractals shift and spin out of the weathered stone basin

where the bird stops to rest.

What he lowers his beak to drink is

between water. Sea and sky lovers

in sepulchral embrace.

My grandfather teaches me Pessoa's paradox

from the rusting chapter ring

of his favourite pocket-watch. Crystal

anointed with centuries of fingerprints,

the penumbral memory of lives that passed,

no more than a tremulous shimmer

in the satins of time.

Death and love cross paths in my heart

like childhood friends—a bird in the hand

or a hand under a pond-stained dress

or a dress dragging along the damp loam,

catching laughter and dead leaves in the lace train.

This is the pattern in the damascening,

the prophecy carved steel-blue through Peruvian copper.

A newborn moon peers from the marble cradle,

its shadow an indistinct cloth on my face.

More than silk headscarf. Not yet funeral shroud.

Swallows circle falling stars. Lapwings tear the hem

from the twisting linens of twilight,

a tragedy in two parts.

Omens will come as long as

someone is sitting by the birdbath,

waiting for them.

By Saanvi Lijin Dharman