Cassandra Voices

Author: Navlika Ramjee

  • Ownership by Navlika Ramjee

    Ownership

    You come into your own
    While words give hue and cry
    In the stillness that you own

    When you are on your own
    With solitude to pacify
    You come into your own

    And the silence is your own
    Though melodies will reply
    To the stillness that you own

    With the calm that you have grown
    You feel that you can fly
    You come into your own

    In the life that you have known
    That strives to mystify
    In the stillness that you own

    And this realm is yours alone
    As you feel the coming sigh
    You come into your own
    In the stillness that you own

  • The Sunset Drive-in Cinema

    I watched the flamed sky
    as the earth rolled back
    and made it seem
    like the sun had set.

    ‘When I was just a little girl…’

    I remember waiting
    for the dark to start
    as we sat in the car
    at the drive-in cinema.

    My mother loved Doris Day.

    Strange business on earth
    all the cars kept apart
    by a long wood fence
    with the whites to the right.

    ‘Que sera sera, what will be…’

    Separate development
    they called apartheid
    and I developed separately
    determinedly differently.

    ‘The future’s not ours to see…’

    I watch the flaming sky
    as the earth rolls back
    and makes it seem
    like the sun is setting.

  • Gitanjali – after Rabindranath Tagore

    I am made endless for your pleasure

    Again and again emptied and filled

    A frail vessel ever with fresh life

    And melodies eternally new

    Breathed through me

    As though a little reed flute

    Cast over the earth

    And at your hand’s immortal touch

    My small heart loses all limits of joy

    To create ineffable utterances

    And on these small hands of mine

    Your infinite gifts are received

    Ages pass and still they pour

    And still there is room for more

     

    Navika Ramjee was born in South Africa in 1950 into an Indian family. Her family history is marked by that of the British Raj. She now lives in Oxford. Her work has appeared in The Wallace Stevens Journal and Aerodrome, a South African literary journal.