The City of Contradictions

Going through old things I'd written, getting ready for a visit to Kolkata, I found this forgotten scrap:

The City of Contradictions

The girl walks on her knees.
Her feet end at the ankles:
she was caught in a contradiction.

People live inside the window
which is inches from your window.

From the corner of your eye
a wedding band
  marching
    away
      from
         you

The rickshaw-puller clangs his
dull bell, waiting to drag you
to the innermost chamber.

Jasmine at the burning ghat.
Friend, whose ashes are these? 

Lost at Sea

I am honored that the literary/arts blog/ezine Qarrtsiluni has accepted my poem Lost at Sea for its latest issue, Water. There is a recording of me reading it as well.

Qarrtsiluni publishes art, photography, writing, video of very high quality, each issue organised around a general topic. Its founders, and a number of the contributors, are people whose writing online I have been following with great pleasure for years. Take a look.

Pretend

I haven't posted this before - I thought it might be too sugary. Nonetheless...

Pretend

I
Orange berries, bittersweet
on a leaf plate, with white pebble cakes.
She pours carefully
from an invisible pot, raises her invisible cup,
fingers crooked delicately, sips,
puts a berry to her lips, smiling a party smile,
saying num num num, whistles
on a blade of grass for music.
Some more tea? Isn't it delicious?

II
Her father's shaving. He makes a foamy beard,
draws the razor in a lawnmower swath
to smooth skin.
"Shave me too, please!"
He removes the razor's two-sided blade,
squirts her face with shaving cream,
shows her her beard in the mirror.
She stands very still
while he shaves off the foam.
She wants to have a moustache
when she grows up.

III
Jump, jump, two at a time.
The lower flight stairs are even-numbered.
The second flight, you skip a step,
then jump, jump, jump again.
The second flight has walls to close you in,
it's always dim. Run!
Reach the top before the tv warms up,
or else.

IV
In Mommy's book of paintings
a naked lady is tied to a tree,
and a knight in armour rides up to save her.
She picks up Gwendolyn, the biggest doll,
takes off her clothes and props her against a chair leg.
She knows it's nasty, but she doesn't know why.

V
A secret clubhouse in the attic cubbyhole,
with a toy piano, and lots of things.
Two children sit, murmuring stories.
The door shuts and click, it's locked.
They shout and shout, and start to cry,
knowing they'll die before anyone finds them.
Then Mommy opens the door
and admits them into light.

Green

I sent this poem out -- I had written it some years back, and forgotten about it until recently -- and got it back with a constructive note, saying that the ending was too familiar. I agree, actually -- I have this tendency to romanticize, and it was easy, I guess ....

But the interesting thing for me is that the final word of the poem: green, was pretty much just a word when I wrote it. And now it is staggering under the burden of so many meanings, implications, hopes, fears.... I see language changing all the time, but I don't often pay much attention to it.

I might try to look at this again sometime, but meanwhile, here it is:

Mantis

Brown as late Autumn,
jointed with leaf-fragments,
your face a horned mask,
you pretend to be old wood.

Did a male mount you?
Did you graze on his head
as he impregnated you with twigs?

You will give birth
to copper stickpins.

When your life dries up
and you sink into earth

you will bring forth green.

Ba on the Ganges

This week's Poetry Thursday prompt is rivers. This is the last in a series of poems I wrote after my mother-in-law died.

Ba on the Ganges

When Ba was heavy and middle-aged,
she took her mother to Benares.
They sat side-by-side in a small boat,
posed stiffly for a photograph.
Behind them, temples, and stairs to the water.
Both faced the camera, smiling slightly,
together holding a small brass pot.
They poured a thin stream of milk into Ganga.

You are Himalaya's daughter.
You came from Heaven to purify the world.
You flow from Shiva's tangled hair.

One of the things set out in her bedroom,
with gods, liniments, spectacles, prayer-books,
was a small copper cauldron, sealed with tin --
Ganga water, last aid, to be poured into her mouth
as she was dying.

You purify those who bathe in you.
You contain the hopes of men for salvation.
You bear the burden of the dead.

When the family women reached the hospital,
each carried Ganga in her purse,
but Ba’s nostrils were already stuffed with cotton,
jaws tied with a strip of white cloth.
They poured the water over her lips.

Your waters bear half-burned corpses.
You enter into them.
Your bed is heaped with bones.

Ba’s brother took her ashes to Benares
in a clay pot garlanded with marigolds.
Bending over the wavelets which slapped against his feet,
he set her afloat on Ganga. She bobbed on the surface
for a minute or two, then sank to join
the assemblage of the dead,
given to the mercy of the river.

Other poems in the same series: Journeying, Uses for Wood, Sorting Ba's Things

Pluperfect

The Poetry Thursday prompt this week is for a humorous poem, or a poem which tells a joke.

NOTE 1: The poem starts off with one of my favourite jokes ever. No one to whom I have told it has ever thought that it was funny.

NOTE 2: Scrod is a fish which is associated with New England.

Pluperfect

This guy is visiting Boston for the first time.
He gets into a taxi and says to the driver,
“Do you know where I can get scrod?”
The driver says, “I’ve heard that question a million times,
but never in the pluperfect subjunctive.”

Taxi drivers are the Buddha.
Bartenders are the Buddha.

The meaning is, "Hey, buddy,
why are you tying yourself in knots
over something so
subject-verb-object
as conjugation, anyway?
Do I have to draw you a diagram?"

The man in the back seat realises
that pluperfect is too much to ask
and achieves nirvana.
He leaves without giving a tip.

In the Dream

Poetry Thursday inspired me again:

In the Dream

You bent over me smiling
I in my white cotton dress
(though really you were someone else).

Then

a woman
splayed into an X
for DANGER for NO
fell
endlessly slowly
into a giant sinkhole.

It is about the past
and the message is
KEEP BACK FROM THE EDGE.

I didn't need to be told so much
just because I found
crumpled
brown-spotted
behind something
a page of calligraphy:

Urdu loops and curves
woven into a poem
spooling backward.

love is an ocean of fire ||
in which you must drown ||

Swimming

I was reading an article about James Agee in The New Yorker. It quoted something that he had written as a film critic, about Bathing Beauty, a film featuring Esther Williams:

I could not resist the wish that Metro-Goldwin-Mayer had topped its aquatic climax -- a huge pool full of girls, fountains, and spouts of flame -- by suddenly draining the tank and ending the show with the entire company writhing like goldfish on a rug. But M-G-M resisted it.

Naturally that reminded me of a poem I wrote several years ago. I don't know what inspired it, but it came out weird, and it's still weird, and here it is:

Swimming to Shore

We show good form,
try not to flail.

A few tread water;
then Esthers
with beautiful breast-strokes
surround them
swimming in sync,
singing high and sweet:

Honey, just don’t think
don’t think
There’s no time to cogitate
it’s late
You have a hot blind date
with fate
Come on! The water’s fine!

and a grinning dolphin leaps at the end
to make sure.

We're praying to reach
that blessed Shore
where we won’t have to breathe
anymore.

Morning Raga

Thanks to yesterday's rant I received more visitors than ever before on a single day (309). Today I resume regular programming, with a little poem I wrote.

Morning Raga

It’s a dazzling solo
demanding complete concentration:
nudge the sun higher

cue chittering birdsong
offer yellow-skinned bananas
to a blue bowl.

All my arms are busy.
I hum a sloka of great power.
My feet trample the hell out of
demon Inertia.

It’s a virtuoso turn
and I dedicate it to you
with a cup of coffee.

You receive it and smile
holding your hand above my head
in the gesture which means
‘Daughter, be always victorious.’

Crows

One crow
head cocked
carbon-steel beak agape
is raffish
half-comical

Look again
at sleekness
at talons

Many crows
a raucous convocation
squabble
fly up at a sound
wheel settle complain
fight quick battles

A doubled creature
joined in fury
falls from the sky

a flapping vortex

the black confusion of fear

Aftershock

I wrote this poem after another devastating earthquake in India. It came to my mind again, after reading that many of the victims of this latest earthquake, in Northern Pakistan and parts of Kashmir, in India, were children.

Aftershock

A child’s forehead,
eyebrows, dark lashes.
Nothing else shows
above the broken pieces
the world flung over her

except one forearm
in a pink sweater:
at the wrong angle,
as if someone had found it
and placed it beside the closed eyes
for company.

Men will dig into the rubble,
free her as tenderly as they can.
Fire will melt the heaviness
from her limbs.
She will rise in smoke
above earth’s dark dream.

The Hot Season

There are heaps of watermelons piled by the roadside. When I get out of the car, my sunglasses fog up instantly. I can smell my own sweat. What does it all mean? Yes, the dreaded hot season has returned.

A couple of years ago I wrote a poem for the hot season, in a very rhythmic form called a Sapphic stanza. I posted it here last year, but here it is again: it has returned with the sun. I remembered it last week, and I've been humming the rhythm of it, with bits of the words thrown in here and there, ever since.

It's a little early for it: mangoes come after watermelons, and our mango trees are just flowering (though my neighbour has green fruit on his trees already). But the season has begun.

Hot Season

Sidewalk vendors raise heaps of green-rimmed melons
bright papayas, oranges made of sunlight.
Bursts of bougainvillea glow magenta
under the Fire Star.

Pick a mango when it is half-green, half-ripe,
wrap in straw strands carefully, nest-like, hatch it.
It’s the egg that brings forth another year – it’s
hot season’s augur.

Air like water hinders each heavy footstep,
holds the scents of car exhaust, incense, jasmine,
brings us news of mating crows’ squabbling caucus.
Summer’s upon us.

Slither

Slither

There's a Good Snake in the compound, the gardener says.
He speaks of it with gesture and whisper.
I rear my forearm inquiringly,
cup my hand for the flared hood.
He moves in response.
We threaten each other.

The women who work in the house
had urged me to hire him: He's young,
they said, and not too dark.
A country boy, he'll work hard.

When I give him instructions
he puts his palms together,
bows quickly and looks awed, or frightened.
He's very strong, he carries a machete.
He says it's for the cobra.

I walk in the garden and hear my echo,
the start and sudden stop of rustle, slither,
in corners where dead leaves gather.
We two gods keep uncertain pace together.

Sorting Ba's Things

When my mother-in-law, who was called Ba ('mother'), died, I wrote a series of poems about it. I've posted two of them earlier: Journeying and Uses for Wood. Here's another one:

Sorting Ba's Things

Sorting through cupboards in Ba's old room,
I tugged a stuck drawer open,
pulled the string of a small cloth bag, to find
pink and white grins of outgrown false teeth;
in another bag, spectacles, blinking in the light.

And there were her gods and puja implements -
incense sticks, oil lamps with wicks she rolled
out of cotton and ghee, small statues of Krishna,
elephant-headed Ganesh, Lakshmi the wealth-giver,
the book of slokas she chanted every day.

Sunday mornings she watched Mahabharat on TV -
a miracle in every episode - gods' stately progress
through the air, seated on lotus flowers;
towering demons with big bellies and walrus fangs
who laughed "Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!" just before
a hurled fire-discus struck them between the eyes
and they toppled like trees.
Sometimes I sat to watch with her,
and she would say, "Did you see that?!"

Dear Ba, by the end all the sets of teeth hurt you,
you wore them only for photographs,
and the glasses could not make the slokas clear.

May Lakshmi keep you beside her
on the silky petals of her pink lotus.
May Ganesh feed you the sweet ladoo he holds.
And when you are sated and sleepy,
may Krishna soothe you with the song of his flute.

A Public Death

So many deaths of this kind these days. I was sorting through a stack of old papers and found this poem, one of the earliest that I wrote, about the first death that came much too close to me. It was a different President, and the coffins were not hidden away:

A Public Death

A suicide bomber slammed the Embassy.
Along with his colleagues, B blew up.
Then came the formalities:
fragments reassembled
in rows of flag-draped coffins.
Military honours.
The President wiping away tears.

I spent days on my hands and knees,
scrubbing the floor again and again.
No need to add water.

Which war was it?
Death was new to me then.
My first time, and full of ceremony,
unlike the deaths that came later.

Empty Land

Sorting through old photographs I came across this, of the land across the street from us, before it was stripped, leveled and surrounded by a cinder-block wall.

Wasteland is often like that here: sandy soil and thorn bushes. Patchy ground cover. At the edge of the road there was a cluster of datura. When it rained the low-lying part flooded, becoming a shallow and transitory lake.

The soft, feathery greenness against sand was beautiful, in a making-do-with-little kind of way. There were mongoose, snakes and bandicoots (large rats). When the land was cleared all three moved across the street and tried to find a place in the houses and gardens there. Only the bandicoots seem to have succeeded. We had a mongoose family of three for a year or so, but I haven’t seen them for a long time. (Whenever it rained there was a frog chorus from that land. What’s happened to the frogs? Small frogs would hop across the badminton court, waiting for insects to gather around the lights; but they’re gone now.)

We used to own a piece of land on the East Coast Road, near the Crocodile Bank. There was nothing on it but a little scrub, some casuarinas along the fence near the beach, and one big cashew tree. Cashews grow low to the ground and are umbrella-shaped, so that you can walk inside them and feel that you are in a hidden room. When we sold the land I wrote this:

Empty Land

We went to say good-bye to our land.

We stood for a while in the cashew’s shade
before flinching back into glare.
We walked the road we had built
past casuarinas, beachgrass, to the sea's edge.
Shells like bleached fingernails.
Holes in the sand where small crabs hide.

On the way to the car, bones:
a long curling horn,
its surface papery as a wasp's nest.
White shards half-buried. Old news,

not enough to make a whole of anything.
I picked up a vertebra's eroded torus.

That was all. It was empty land.

Lost Reptile

Little dinosaur,
child's stick figure with long stick-toes,
you are in the wrong landscape.
How did you come to this white stone floor?

The fat house-lizards
cling to walls beyond my reach,
but a human footstep would redraw
your curved, expectant body -
the sketch of a smile -
into scribble.

The door is open. Scuttle quickly.
Shelter in a clump of grass
hidden away from hunting eyes,
and snap at pterodactyl butterflies.

Apricots

Dried apricots, imported from America:

Suede-soft discs on a white plate
easy, spread open to the gaze.
Their taste bursts on the tongue:
The thermonuclear snack!
A sun in every bite.

Dried apricots, Indian:

Dusty small round dull-coloured. They are sweet, but you have to fight for them: flesh clenched around stone. Break the stone for the hidden nut. They teach the sweetness that doesn't come too easily.

I've Spent Years

I’ve spent years
in another country,
learning songs you’ve never heard.

What is it that rises
like the scent of attar
from the whispers of consonants,
breath of vowels;
the word which enters
from behind the curtain of a line,
to make the listener sigh with pleasure?

Listen:

The harsh wind asked me,
what are you writing in the sand?

I answered: I am a ruined garden
after spring has passed.

The dust of my self trickles
from the clenched fingers of my hand.

That’s not how it really is.

If I were singing
as I moved from room to room,
you'd hear it:
almost familiar, just out of reach.

Vox Humana

My father was born on April Fools Day. I had a vexed relationship with him, which smoothed out only a few years before he died. As much my fault as his, no doubt - I find myself more like him than I wanted to be.

I wrote this poem about him:

Vox Humana

There's a cartoon: a man wrapped in a tuba,
its horn gaping above his head.
He sits across from a fortune-teller's
scarf-wrapped hair, hooked nose, hoop earrings.
She looks into her crystal ball and says,
"I see an empty neighbourhood."

Someone slipped it under our door
when my father bought the electric organ.
He would pull out Vox Humana for a heavy tremolo,
turn up the volume, and fumble
through Seasons in the Sun,
or Send in the Clowns.

The thing he knew best was that he had failed,
but he didn't know he couldn't play the organ.
He drove me crazy with his dreams, his pretentions.
When he was alive I made a clown of him,
told stories about him to my friends.

Now he seems like a man with a heavy tuba,
the Tuba of Failed Aspiration. He's sitting at a table,
staring at a crystal ball, hoping for anything
he hasn't seen before.