“I notice that autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche 

All our bloods in harvest
Call out for celebration
Goddesses, ghouls, ancestors
All demand libation
Anglos hang onto Halloween
Going full-on pagan

Day of the dead
Nine nights divine
Mahua, soma, mezcal, wine [1]
Bonfire, bonhomie, dead’s bread, bhog [2]
Dakinis Joginis going rogue [3]

Blood seems to remember
In the window before winter
A creeping crevice widens
Between that which we will never know
And that which we have always sensed
Before enlightened sense prevailed

Even secular saints agree
On this season’s propensity
For being “more of soul than nature”
This I am willing to wager
That all our souls in harvest
Call out for celebration
Goddesses, ghouls, ancestors
All demand libation

Notes:

[1] Mahua refers to a liquor made of the Mahua flower common in Eastern India.

[2] Dead’s bread is an English translation of Pan de Puerto. Bhog is a shared meal offered during many Hindu festivities, one that has been offered to the gods and consecrated by them.

[3] Dakinis and Joginis are the Goddess Kali’s troublemaking, fearsome companions and helpers.

^^^

Durba Chattaraj is an anthropologist who teaches writing and a writer who teaches anthropology at the Princeton Writing Program. Previously, she acted as one of the first faculty to co-found a new liberal arts university in India, Ashoka University, where she taught anthropology and writing. She is working on a book titled Democracy, Education, Decolonization that examines the relationship between pedagogy and democracy in both the U.S. and India. Follow her on Substack: The Difference Filter.

This poem originally appeared in Sapiens. Read the original post here.