The River of Forgetting
by Paul McMahon
Standing on the riverbank, the man cradled a small package
as he negotiated with a nearby boatman.
Then he waded into the River Ganges and placed
the package—a loaf-sized bundle wrapped in gold cloth,
tied to a flat stone—onto the v-shaped keel
before climbing on-board.
The boatman dug the oars in
and moved them out towards the middle.
On the riverbank, a youngster was playing a kite,
his gleaming eyes, black as headstone marble, looking skyward,
to where a shovel of white pigeons flew out from a tower.
Barking dogs broke into a fight and I looked over to see them scatter
between the black cows, garlanded in marigolds,
standing entranced on the riverside steps that fed down into the water
below the sandalwood-orange cremation-fires of a burning Ghat
as people promenaded past enjoying the morning sun.
Near the middle of the river, the boatman raised the oars.
The man stood up, lifted the loaf-sized nugget
and dropped it into the river without ceremony.
The boatman lowered the oars
and rowed in.
The boy’s purple kite,
a diamond strip cut from a plastic bag
and fixed to a bamboo crucifix,
dived and twirled through the air
like a dolphin swimming invisible currents,
its nose sifting through the unseen
as it surges down into the blind sea.
When I looked down again the man was gone.
The boatman, perched at the back of the boat,
was smoking a cigarette.
Gilded into the alluvial veins of my memory
is myself turning to look out towards the middle of the Ganges:
the surface was still—sealed over,
like the mind of the father,
through whose unfathomable waters,
embossed deep down, tied to a flat stone slab,
his shrouded child plummets.
Paul McMahon, from Belfast, Ireland, holds an MA in Writing, with distinction, from NUIG, Ireland. He won first prize in The Ballymaloe International Poetry Prize (2012), The Nottingham Poetry Open Competition (2012), The Westport Arts Festival Poetry Competition (2012) and in The Golden Pen Poetry Prize (2011). He received a literature bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland in 2013. His poetry has been widely published in journals such as The Threepenny Review and Southword.