sai, my Beloved!
Fill me into your red dye
You ferried me over the Pacific once
Today, I return, to find the ports of Komagata’s revolts
What a long journey from the Fragrant Harbour,
with gifts of agarwood for the coast of Salish peoples
When Ghadaries promised to deliver        
your Jahaz’s lotus-scented treasure
And in its place, lay memorials at Budge Budge and Coal Harbour
But where is that lost girl?
a baby girl - nameless,
deported to Timonwal, Amritsar

‍

sai, my Beloved!
Fill me into your red dye
You ferried me over the Pacific once
Today, I return, to find the well of Jallianwalla Bagh
When your lovers gathered in the garden of blossom
to sing to you on Vaisakh
‍with offerings of their harvest
And in its place, lay the marks of bullet holes on that brick wall
Where a second birth takes place,
Ram Mohammad Singh Azad

sai, my Beloved!
Fill me into your red dye
You ferried me over the Pacific once
Today, I return, to find the broken parts of Partition - Panj Ab -
The cost of that azadi
‍Where the map of Radcliffe carved on paper
cut through my body like a dagger through my liver
And erected Wagah,
the border of corpses seeping through my gushing veins
Now, I carry them all
in the heaviness of this hair
Endless river streams turned graves
of all your identities and names
Is this the memory of all your forms?

sai, my Beloved!
Fill me into your red dye
You ferried me over the Pacific once
Today, I return, to the sarovar of Ramdaspur
For a taste of the red dates from the Beri Dukh Bhanjani
and find instead Gandhi’s blue tainted branch
And Bhindranwala rises and descends,
which side of the marble wall was he on?
Now thousands join Tegh Bahadur in Delhi -
what a blood bath!
‍Shaheed, but without their consent
And human rights are thrown upon U.N.
But who will make, a widow from the colony,
a root of a new home?
Where leaves may grow anew,
like jujube’s fruit

sai, my Beloved!
Fill me into your red dye
You ferried me over the Pacific once
Today, I return, to the fields of basmati and golden kanak
‍From Ambedkar to Anandpur Sahib Resolution
The price of Punjabi suba -
modernity’s safaid pages
humanity's new shade
Dharam Yudh's masquerading fate
The rigged scale of the green revolution
Now the departed board Monsanto’s cancer train
Ashes of trickery replace the great diwan shelves
While the arching ink of Paonta is substituted with fire and grenades
Our shayarir blown away,
and Urdu flown away

550 years wiped clean
1430 pages float upstream
The tirath of 12 months turned eternity
When will we hear the melody of Tukhari again?
Once stretched Kush to Tibet
Now from where will we get our rabab, O Firandia!
Now our veins and tears become its broken strings
And its players stomp upon them as poisonous mobs
And kaur Pritam pleas, now your daughters cry, O Waris Shah,
when will you rise again to write in the ink of your red dye?
O when will you bring Heer again to Takht Hazar?
And singh Sartaaj sings,
from where will we find our Rumi and Farid?
ve Goya Lal, from where do we spark the flame of inner atma?

O sai, my Beloved!
When will You wear the bride’s dress again?
When Siri Ragu struck the chords of all your ishqaris
‍And the Tenth rained upon us deep-crimson bliss
When the path of the Khalsa was the way of sahej
‍And miri-piri danced in full harmony
on the balance scale

sai, my Beloved!
Fill me into your red dye
You ferried me over the Pacific once
Today, I return, on the rainbow, for a touch of That Wind on my skin
Bring us to Lahore, to feel the sweet gurh on our tongues
Lohri’s sugarcane rasa
‍and fulfil that thirst for Mian Mir’s darshan
‍O rababi of Mardana, when will they invite you to the Darbar
to fill us once again with the tunes of Mirasi
and light up Harimandir Sahib with Diwali’s qawwali
‍when the Sixth came home from Gwalior azad
‍Now, let those heavy clouds explode That Bliss
Drop those water balloons at Hola,
filled with your red dye
And shower upon this dastaar,
the true sindoor of your Mohalla

sai, my Beloved!
Fill me into your red dye
You ferried me over the Pacific once
Today, I return, in dreams, for a visa to your Dharam Khand
Where your dharti’s sanctuary rests
As this sorrowful spirit mourns in four pieces:
For that ishnan at Kartarpur
O what I shall do to seek the needle and thread
which could stitch the page of Nankana to my heart’s chest
Then track up to Sivalik Hills
like the Sixth's passage to the plateaus of Cathay
And build the Yamuna Sutlej love canal
by weaving the baskets of sacha sauda dharamsal
‍O where is that dream ticket,
to complete along Ravi’s freedom banks,
the perfect Begampura

sai, my Beloved!
You ferried me over the Pacific once
Today, I return, to the metropole on the other side of the Atlantic
And I watch the Koh-i-Noor
through the towering walls of London’s glass halls
The gem of miri crowned from the ruins of the Lost Palace
stolen wealth derived from sharab di rasa
‍missionary blankets smothered in disease, daru and deception
rails of forest banditry on lands First Nations
constructed with the sweat and blood of Chinese and Indians
From the treaty Jahangir first paid at Surat
And those boatloads of Black warriors
        in shackles shipped to islands Caribbean
But the jewel of your true red dye
still remains to be found

sai, my Beloved!
Fill me into your red dye
You ferried me over the Pacific once
Today, I return, a wandering ghost even after sixty-eight hajj
‍and across the seven seas
Adrift from my cherished One,
and still longing the kiss of qisse,
a birth sakhi of your udasi
‍Like the cradling Mother from Kabul to Goindval
mai, when will our yatra finally meet,
the confluence of Sarasvarti

O Nanak, my Beloved!
You ferried me over the Pacific once
Today, I sail in circles in search of your Indus treasure chest
The ruby of your true red dye
Lost in the Indian Ocean
The jewel of your piri
‍sai, my Beloved!
Drench me with your true red dye
Imbue me with all your pigment
And colour
me
red