Silver Bridges

from Chai: Travel Poems by Marc Nair feat. Neon & Wonder

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lyrics

Silver Bridges

1
Tanvir, our guide to silver, slams bangles
on the floor to show disparities in purity,
the alloys ringing harsh and unmalleable.

Father handworks catalogues of European
silver motifs then fuses the West with sacred
Eastern elephants wrapped in Sanskrit.

Tanvir, a gemologist by training,
bridges the raw sweat of stones and metals
slaved from the earth under the loupe of his gaze.

He lives a clean life with soft, musical sounds
that ring frankly when thrown against
the tea money underbelly of India.

2
During the summer, he will head to Kashmir.
There, the border crossing guard posts
are sold for lakhs to the highest bidder.

Winning officers need no MBA to extort.
The silver rupee alone is enough to graduate
them from avarice to ambition.

Tanvir will travel by train, crossing his home-town
bridge engineered in 1865, when Englishmen
first alloyed themselves to this land.

Thousands still walk daily over the eroding bricks,
singing out their faith with silver voices.
In India, they believe, only God upholds the bridges.