Mango Sun
Dreaming
today
I saw you,
as you have told me,
as a little girl
climbing among branches
of backyard mango trees
looking for fruit
perfectly ripe
to match sweetness
of your tongue.
Now your words
like mango juice
dripping from your lips
drop onto my hearing
bright liquid that
grows into sticky
crystal gems
I taste
beneath passion's sun.
I saw you,
as you have told me,
as a little girl
climbing among branches
of backyard mango trees
looking for fruit
perfectly ripe
to match sweetness
of your tongue.
Now your words
like mango juice
dripping from your lips
drop onto my hearing
bright liquid that
grows into sticky
crystal gems
I taste
beneath passion's sun.
I taste the
sweetness of alphonso On my lips
parched with longing
For ears that hear
Unspoken uncertainty
In all my conversations
Smooth over warring factions
Of my being with their presence
parched with longing
For ears that hear
Unspoken uncertainty
In all my conversations
Smooth over warring factions
Of my being with their presence
--Suhita Shirodkar
Alphonso, of course, is a male name, but it is also a particularly sweet mango. The Portuguese introduced grafting to native mango trees in India; one of the resultant varieties, the alphonso, was named after the chief Portuguese colonizer, Afonso de Albuquerque, duke of Goa. According to Diogo Barbosa Machado, he “corrected this injustice of nature [being the second rather than the first son of the Lord of Villaverde] by climbing to the summit of every virtue, both political and moral.” After serving in North Africa for most of his adult life, at 50 he was sent on an expedition to India in 1503 and established the foundation of Portugal’s eastern empire by constructing fort Immanuel (Fort Kochi); he returned in 1507 and conquered Socotra and Ormuz. In 1509 he defeated a joint Mamluk-Ottoman-Calicut-Gujatat fleet at Diu, forcing the Manlus and Ottomans to abandon the Indian Ocean. In 1609 he became Portugal’s 2nd governor of India, captured Goa and Malacca, located the “spice islands” (the Maluku Islands) and established trading relations there, opened Europe’s first direct diplomatic and commercial ties with China.
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