Broken stonework, sharp edges. I feel them / cutting my cheeks and chest. Maybe / someone took my legs?

Let’s sit beneath this sky
strung with nine hundred thousand lights
and drink bowls of this old chyāng

You – my bastard child, you have learnt to speak, after years

I have created –

a country for you where your fractured self

lives by multiple names

With not enough tomorrows to go round, and all yesterdays in short supply

Night closes in with its breath taking grip/ Night that walks in the guise of day.

The Kathmandu sky sliced with unlive wires. Highways broken like bread or a body.

A few years ago, my husband and I shared a flat in London with my brother and sister. On some kind of quest for self-improvement, we decided that we should all read more poetry.

In our continuing celebration of poetry this week, we bring to you two gems from the very first print volume of La.Lit, by highly regarded Nepali poets Manu Manjil and Momila.