What the River Keeps

What the river keeps, it keeps quietly.

It keeps the night a young prince
rode his horse into the flood
to reach a girl on the far bank —
and the city he built for her afterwards,
so no one would have to cross like that again.

It keeps the tamarind tree at Osmania
where, in the September of 1908,
a hundred and fifty people climbed
and held on, and watched the water
take the rest.

It keeps the arches of Purana Pul,
four hundred years of footsteps,
a bullock’s hoof, a bicycle bell.

It keeps, now, what we give it:
the hyacinth’s green fist,
the plastic, the slow black water,
the smell we cover our noses against
on the bridge at Chaderghat,
not looking down.

But a river is patient in a way we are not.
Under all of it, it still remembers
how to be clear —
the way an old woman who has forgotten
her children’s names can still
sing every word of the song
her mother sang to her at the well.

One day, it says,
you will want me back.
Bring the boy on the horse.
Bring the girl on the far bank.
I kept their place.