Published by the Writers Workshop, Calcutta in 1973
Contents
MONOLOGUE OF AN INDIAN MOTHER 7
THE FIRST LOUD WALL IN THE TWILIGHT 8
LET ME GET WET
Let me get wet
In the fall all day
Be the rain’s bad child and
Rolling stone of my town
Run wild and stark as the flooded drains
Like school-let children and unchained slaves.
Let me get wet
In the fall all night
Be the rain’s glad fool or be
The shivering cold tree with the
Rootpool in the park and the drenched
Branches and leaves dripping to the unquenched dark.
Let me get wet
In the fall always
Be the rain’s sad clown and
Pantomime joy with a gay
Dance of the peacock with his hazy
Blue eyes and ocelli’s fanpice and crazy-crown.
Let me get wet
As the winds in my eye
And as these winds keep singing
In the rain’s high fun
Nor hope for my clouds ever bringing to the sky
Pied parabolas of rainbows set fire to my sun.
THE MOUNTAIN PASS
bands of nomads
inch up the steep
towards its gargoyle-mouth
dragging
herds of stubborn goats
and mules who will not budge
till lashed.
bent-backed, the women
pause midway
burdened with baskets
of geese and children, watch
sloomy-eyed
coveys of listless swifts
dart in and out of arcane
crannies of rock and scarp
kites circle and scream
wind-wafted over the cliff‘s
neck which wears striped
scarves of minatory clouds.
night comes
gradually
as they reach the Pass; then
tired wing
limp hoof
drooping lash
all vanish one by one
in the oral darkness
of its sempiternal yawn.
WHO WILL STAND
Who will stand in the dark rain falling
Be gashed by the knives of cold winds blowing
Be still as the frozen streams of his blood
Feel free as a frog or earthworm crawling
Feel bright though the night be upon him growing
Feel light with both feet stuck in the mud.
Yes, who will be drenched in the dark rain’s shower
Be wet and dripping as the twig leaf blowing
Withstand the wind, withstand the thunder
Be firm as a tree or a strong steel-tower
Be still as the thorny cacti growing
Be low as the blades of grasses under.
Forever, forever is the dark rain falling
Perpetually are my chill winds blowing
Freezing the atrophied streams of my blood
All my days are like earthworms crawling
All my dreams are like twig leaves blowing
Swept away by the perennial flood.
SINNERS AND WHERE THEY GO
they will not wonder when they reach
the telf of hornet and of bat
the zone of torrid, turgid heat.
there vultures do not flap or screech
but perch themselves on lints of fat
and mounds of bones, and maunds of meat.
they dare not tell the sights to each
of fint and folt and what they eat
of common rodents like the rat
and blood-pimps such as vampire, leech
they must expose their legs and feet
to be sucked and stung, and gnawed at.
dead as centaurs on a beach
they as festal food elite
MY WANDAN GIRL
My wandan girl lies homehid now when I need her
Two hands and healing tongs to save my burning self
To pick the auburn coals of my yarring fire and yet
I feel my talanced palms have rivers carved in them.
I, in her search dance with the witch of atal eyes
Learn magic, say abracadabra, keep awake whole nights
As through the unstilled mist and slanted haze of my skies
She showers stars, then vanishes, like the glint in her smiles.
I sing with the sambing wight, viking among girls
And bark in chorus with other sad dogs of the earth
And at the orchestra’s end my siked dawn shows to the
world
A crowd of sick dogs fight one bin of dust.
Now I smile at the new chance-comer nazy and slim
GIANT’S CHILD
The giant’s child plays with mini toys
His monstrous hands are only meant for breaking
The tiny limbs of goggling dolls and gewgaws
(The giant’s child is a giant in the making).
Limp tadpoles lie gasping in his pockets,
Small whelks and minnows with piteous eyes ;
He plucks the filmy irises from their sockets
And treasures them like some school-won prize.
And, speechless in his aviary perch the crowned
Cockatoos and blue budgerigars in a cage
SEASCAPE
Your body
Naked and tall as a cliff
Breasts like crags
I cling to now.
My face
Hard as a carapace
Wedged in the quoin of their cleft
Lips
Razor-sharp brush
Hachures of areolae, kiss
Tips stiff like jags.
I am poised for a fall now
Precariously hung
To this pectoral scarp
Littoral of thighs
Shelving corals of loins
Reefs of calves
I’ll be broken
First among
Then piecemeal swallowed by your tide.
For if they tweet or chirp or make any sound
He chokes their downy throats in a rage.
Crushed flowers lie in the leaves of his book
Stiff butterflies with fractured wings close furled
He views each page with a contented look
The giant’s child owns the whole dead world.
Nondancer, who in her laughter scatters flowers to the
wind
Then leaves me with het nancy goofman and seeing all this
I wonder where my wandan girl lies homehid still.
pander to the maggot’s clat,
rare as milk of python’s teat.
the silence there is loud as speech
the darkness cunning as a cat.
TODAY THE KING
Today the king of dwarfs of rain
Throned on his chair of strokeless five
Clasps two hands in squandered madness
And scatters the winds of clockless time.
Today the adon of road and town
Hogs hotdogs on cobra’s hood
Swallows his pride in poisoned baldness
And keeps his silence till his mouth is full.
Today the lord of lust and bone
Makes loud miles of love himself
Rubs two stone of flaming hardness
And blazes dead fires of his dun hell.
Today the melech of song and pain
Proclaims himself in a polar gale
Freezes to death in the world’s coldness
And where he lies his breath can’t tell.
WORDS DO NOT SPEAK
words do not speak
in the silence of pride
shut lips, clenched teeth
make fierce those eyes.
words do not please
in the speech of pride
hard-lashed, foul-leashed
they watch love dying.
BLOW OUT THE CANDLE
Blow out the candle with the phallus flame
whose melting wax is dripping like semen
piling a heap of sterile waste
like coitus with some atokous woman
in the halo of flame is an angel’s wraith
in the candle’s shadow the shape of a demon.
lean, white and erect the candle burns
consuming the wick of time inch by inch
wind blow it out before it turns
to futile wax, its trivial spark
reveals still vaster emptiness.
o, each dying light brings greater dark
each candle shows our helplessness.
MONOLOGUE OF AN INDIAN MOTHER
Good or bad children must never be denied.
Twisted in shape or deformed from the womb
These beings of flesh are ghosts of my mind.
I place daily
The eldest a dwarf, down from his bed, walk
My cripple on his crutches, teach
Speech to my dumb, to my deaf
Be a lifelong pantomime.
And daily lead my blind into the blinder alleys of this
world.
Hard is the lot of a woman.
She must endure it with patience and pride
Year after year I bear fruit like the earth
I am tired of the agony of labour
I am tired of my children’s birth
Yet being a woman, I must not deny
The call of my man every night.
Now pregnant again I am told
Good or bad children must never be denied.
LANDSCAPE
The folds of your belly
are furrowed
like tumbling fields in a valley
where your navel slopes in
like the hollow of a well.
The ravines of your sex
are burrowed
in the hills of your hips convex
where desire gropes in
like an oyster in a shell.
THE FIRST LOUD WALL IN THE TWILIGHT
the first loud wail in the twilight
and the day seemed darker than night
and I wondered at the shouting and singing
that heralded my day into being
and when the fearful dawn was done
tanned my soul in the eclipsed noon-sun
motioned to the clouds of eve
prophesying me to leave
and while I passed the shadows, homing
through dim lands of pristine gloaming
wondered at the wailing crowd
shut my short day in the shroud.
SONNET
No one should ever know where I my secrets hide
Let all these trees grow private in my park
Unnurtured by the sun, watered in the dark
Sheltered against winds of tongues from every side.
Their boughs by bee nor bird be occupied
No honey hive nor nest of listening lark
Betray their leaves’ whisper 3 their fallen bark
Should light no fires lest they be my secrets’ guide.
And year by year let them be multiplied:
These secluded groves in darkness wholly built
Shy growths in my park harboured permanent
Trees of all my folly, all my shame and guilt;
And when these fall, the world remain ignorant
Some thing in me had ever lived and died.
REALISATION
Shut up in the bronze prison of his horizon
He sees no lands or seas that lie beyond his vision
But only the languid wisps of factory smoke
That steal up the sprawling stairs of the blue
And shuddering wings of cold birds strike his view.
Is there nothing there, he says, and nothing beyond
As he shivers in the cold of a wintry dawn
Jostled by streams of traffic which evoke
One recurring thought “Are they all oblivious
That each road leads to the same hiatus.”
Perhaps they know but pretend to be unaware
Of the great hiatus in the dead’s hemisphere
(Each keeping a clock but stifling its stroke)
Immersed in the chiaroscuro of their tide
They have mastered the art of being preoccupied.
SONG
Let the laped sam split
Poled sides with laughs
From his lame pelled wit
Open mouth exhibit
Bare teeth like giraffe’s.
Let the biped pam sit
On his grave’s paraphs
Have a tearfilled pit
Have a pale dole writ
On its cold epitaphs.
Let my lean nam flit
On pam’s cenotaphs
Beat death’s ghost in it
Greet sam lost in wit
Draw new life’s graphs.
GATES OF HORN
Grief of my life there’s no room for you.
In the billion bels and frantic phons of sound
You will die in the deafening din of this mad town
Nor find one vacant grave or dumb tomb for you.
No, nomad grief there is no home for you
No open door in this city’s vast bounds
‘Where two blood-hounds snarl at the gates of horn
And ten armed men spell the doom for you.
My beggar grief, keep your sandglass by the side
There is no place to hide, no place to run
Each foot is lit by million lumens of the sun
Each fiend watches from his window wide-eyed
Ten armed men take their firing stance with the gun
And two bloodhounds tear every pound of your hide.
DANCE
Room green darry
Gondolas on the sill
Wide river road
Gliding waterless
Leaping little deer
Lasses love-silly
Room green darry
Elbow tall fan
Lamp blue reed
Sharp steel knife
Dashlight on door
That is not enough.
Gondolas on the sill
Bough bird’s shield
Dazzled above else
Boats wind-lashed
Below neem, sal
Clumps all shady.
Wide river road
And shoe ash-trays
Frozen floors dare
Boatmen at oars
Laughing lads raid
Love under trees.
Gliding waterless
Swans on the wall
Sailing the palace
Built on grieved love
The river’s wet soul
Was a king’s regal will.
Leaping little deer
Toys and teapoys
Peacocks from arid
Place in pose too
Parrots very dear
Perfect at poise.
Lasses love-silly
Trim-slim-saried
Bangled, blouseless
Nothing is sadder
To see song sell
When love is a dross.
Room green darry
Gondolas on the sill
Wide river road
Gliding waterless
Leaping little deer
Lasses love-silly.
NOTEs ON “‘DANCE’
Interpretation
The poem sets out to recreate the movement of six dancers. Each line of the opening stanza (in which they all appear collectively) represents one dancer. In the subsequent stanzas, they fall out one by one and enact their performance individually. Thus the second stanza represent the movement of the first dancer, the third that of the second dancer, the fourth that of the third and so on. In the last stanza they all regroup and reunite and form the same pattern of movement as in the opening stanza.
Prosody
- All lines have 3 stresses for scansion. The number of slacks may vary.
- In each stanza, end words of alternate lines are all reverse consonantal rhymes. For example in the first stanza, the end word of the first line is “darry” made up of consonants “d” and “r” which are reversed in “road” the end word of the third line. The same is true of the end words of even lines (sill, less, silly).
- A similar scheme is followed in the remaining stanzas.
LAMP-LIGHTER
lamp-lighter lamp-lighter please come now
there is someone walking my blind night hark
to the sounds of harpies calling in the dark
to the cloven foot-falling by the demon’s bough.
i sit here crippled, mouth dumb, eye blind
to the time strangled day and the heart beating drums
quick, light the wick, lamplighter in my mind
ere the claws clutch throat and the cloven foot comes,
WHEN I REACH
When I reach the end of desire
Frozen snows at the pales of silence
My breath’s revival past sun’s fire
Then I know will Death make sense
And truth like a mine explode in my face
And hurl me far beyond the fence.
Now suspended I lie in space
Between these stars and the earth’s night
Plotting serenely my meteor’s trace
Among tiers of darkness in the vacant height
‘Waiting for the world to be set ablaze
For a moment at least in its sinking flight.
RIVERSCAPE
In the san river
The calder rings of daking fill the daver, fly past
The cold sunstones, the neeking dalers
Over the spangled mounds of croted shingle
Then lean like lolts listening to palavers
Of cloming shelts teafed in dark dingles
And on the bank’s teal where the river turns
Tilers dart and shoot like shafts of brilliant steel
Out of the rolling flanges of liquid wheels
And lumens of spuming light, split
Scatter, break, fall asunder
Among the tansy stones.
Later when the light changes
In the kaleidoscopic talc of the skies
The river’s wavering mirrors break into laming prisms
And far beyond
The ploming tides are limned with chimeras.
NOTE ON ‘‘RIVERSCAPE”
The poem is an effort to describe in minute detail the river Brahamaputra as it flows at Neamati Ghat- 9 miles from Jorhat. This visual experience for me seemed to correspond closely to hearing of some profound musical composition. In trying to recapture its symphonic flow, therefore, I had to resort to neology. Thus the poem contains many words which will not be found in the dictionary.
DREAMS
i, too, had shelves in my room
(part of an old house which had
windows with glass-panes broken
crumbling walls
and cracks in the ceiling)
stacked with reams of dreams
until a swarm of rats descended
and gnawed them out of shape
now nothing is left;
for, even that heap of bitten scrap
is blown away by the blast of years.
RUINS
a swarm of bees
hangs round my honey-spent hive
bees who neither build nor seek
but only hover
and hum there incessantly
and never leave its hollows.
and never long any more
for nectar cups of flowers
nor care for coming springs
but like phantoms hover
within heart’s gaping hollows
— drones of shattered dreams.