The poem ‘before the anointing’ from Rupam’s forthcoming collection ‘decolonising the broken heart’ published in Wasafiri Volume 38, Issue 3
“Politically conscious in a different way, Rupam Baoni’s poem ‘before the anointing’ is a claustrophobically layered incantation of an impossible cleansing ritual: ‘the bathing is an act of/revoking the past, the unction, thick, amniotic/ … /in the holy emulsion/live histories and geographies.” – from Emily Mercer’s Editorial ‘Good Old New Ways’
Wasafiri
Volume 38, 2023 –
Issue 3

before the anointing
eyes swept forward, chin parallel
to the ground, shoulders lax, engage
your core: you’ve acquired your bearing
over a millennium; don’t tip your head
forward, sit still to allow the pouring: sesame
and olive oil infused with the orange of
flowers, of jasmine, rose, cinnamon, musk; let
your body bathe in the slick of continents you’ve
waylaid, laid, then carefully overlaid until
we’re all palimpsests, until
we’re paradoxes indigenous to landforms written
over or overwritten, until we’ve lost our tongues
to other tongues, to all tongues, until we’re
tongueless; your gilded spoon is the hollow
where hunger’s sat eternities or all that comes
along with it — desires, dreams, dispossessions,
yours, mine, dredged up in shoals along the
coastlines you’ve cruised then crystallised
upon your diadems, the rings, swords and
sceptres you sport; the bathing is an act of
revoking the past, the unction, thick, amniotic,
running down your face, neck, torso, groin
a symbol of blood, of bloodiness, clotted
in patches now, scabbing over lesions and
wounds of nations you’ve held dear – so
dear for centuries – until all fragrances have lost
themselves in themselves; in the holy emulsion
live histories and geographies, the vernaculars
consumed and regurgitated; the sacred communion
carries in it incantations aborted in your
many wakes, set rootless and adrift on the
pacific now; your first gasp at the decant marks
the freighting back-and-forth of fear and of
heartache, aches, postcolonial aches someone called
them in passing and subcutaneous, subsisting, still
wedged in there somewhere; the chrism & ampulla
are carriers, bearers of cries that never carried, or
were made to carry; sit still to allow the pouring
~~
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