Gita Ralleigh

1977 Father shows me a tiger

hiding in the map of India, 
(a place he no longer calls home).

Here his undivided land is king again 
uncaged by time, released to roam. 

I trace a finger over border and line,
mind trying to spring tiger from paper.  

Later, he walks to the store for green 
chillies, onions, ginger, flinches at all

the skinheads flicking Vs. My father
is lost in the dark of a dream. How

once in a past with yellow walls
he kept a dovecote on the flat roof.

1947 my father at 13, washing off
grime in a stream of Delhi water.

Hears scuffled courtyard dirt, a yowl
and wingbeat. Curses, drops soap

to sprint courtyard to street. His sisters 
laughing as towel slips from narrow hips. 

Naked he seizes cat, frees bird from teeth
holds up the mauled white dove of peace.

auguries

When the birds were dead, we gathered
up their small and scattered heads. Fired

them clean of charred flesh and feather,
scoured each to yellow dome. Bleached 

skulls lined long wooden tables like cups. 
In leather aprons we took their measure:

hollow of bone, lacunae of air, angle of bill,
gleam of eye. How breakable they seemed. 

Blasting them in floods of radiant atoms,
we summoned up life on whistle and pipe.

Nothing. No song but quiet. Abandoned
rows of hollow heads furred with dust. 

One by one they shattered, bones crunched
beneath our soles. We heard fluting notes,

a sonation of ghost wings brushed our eyes
as they rose. We were blameless. No lie. How 

could we know a future the skulls of birds 
foretold? Our ears too old to hear their singing.

Gita Ralleigh is a writer and NHS doctor born to Indian immigrant parents in London. She has been published by Wasafiri, Bellevue Literary Review, The Emma Press and Magma Poetry. She also teaches creative writing to science undergraduates and is completing an MSc on the intersection of literature with medicine. Her poetry collection A Terrible Thing is forthcoming from Bad Betty Press.