t.r.rajasekharaih's satirical poetry
TRANSCRIPT
The Collected Poetry ofT.R.Rajasekharaiah
Edited byBasavaraj Naikar
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Dedicated toThe Vice Chancellor
Late Sri. Sadashiva WodeyarFor his selfless love and affection
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IntroductionT.R. Rajasekharaiah (1926-2009), the only son of
Sri Rudraradhya was born in a Virasaiva (jangama)family at Tarikere in Chikamagalur District ofsouthern Karnataka. The only son of his father, hecompleted his school education at Tumkur andcompleted his Bachelor of Arts Degree in English atthe Maharaja College of Mysore. As he stood FirstClass First and became a Gold Medalist in his B.A.Degree, he was instantly appointed in the sameprestigious college as a Lecturer in English. Heserved there for about ten years. Meanwhile he
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decided to do his post-graduation in English. Forthis purpose he had to become a student in a collegewhere he himself was a teacher, an embarrassingsituation for him. He therefore took his M.A.examination externally from Nagpur University, Nagpurand earned the first rank and became a Gold Medalistonce again. After earning his M.A. Degree in English,he applied for a Reader’s post at KarnatakUniversity, Dharwad. Mr. A.K.Ramanujan was also a hotcompetitor with him for the said post. ButA.K.Ramanujan’s academic qualifications at that timewere lesser than those of T.R. Rajasekharaiah, whowas a First Class First and a Gold Medalist, hencethe latter was selected for the Reader’s post atKarnatak University, Dharwad in 1958. He was selectedas Professor of English at the Post-Graduate Centreof Karnatak University at Gulbarga in 1971, where heserved until his retirement in 1986 at the age of 60.After his retirement he lived a secluded life inBengaluru from 1986 to 2009 until his death at theage of 83. He is survived by his wife, two sons and adaughter.
During 1964-66, he went to USA as a FulbrightSenior Visiting Professor and taught at FairleighDickinson University, NJ, and State University of NewYork at Buffalo. He was also a Fellow of theUniversity of Minnesota in 1964-65 and of New YorkUniversity in 1965-66. An original thinker and anexcellent orator, he addressed many clubs andcultural associations of America about Indianculture, literature and philosophy. Many of hisspeeches were telecast and broadcast widely in
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America. He carried out his post-doctoral researchwork on Walt Whitman and published his famous Roots ofWhitman's Grass from the Fairleigh Dickinson UniversityPress, USA. As he grew into a brilliant academicianand studied American poetry deeply, his own poeticmode slowly changed from romantic to realistic,especially satirical one.
Dr. T.R.Rajasekharaiah happens to be a latebloomer (in terms of publication) in Indian Englishpoetry like Shiv K. Kumar. He had published his firstcollection of Kannada poems entitled Rudraksi as earlyas 1966 and earned the Karnataka State SahityaAkademi Award for it the next year. The poems inRudrakshi were cast in the romantic or navodaya mould.He wrote his earliest English poem in 1960 and thencontinued his poetic career intermittently but didnot bother to publish it. After his return fromAmerica in 1966, he felt deeply depressed anddisillusioned with the squalid life in India.Nauseated by the Indian filth, superstition andsqualor, angered by the Indian communalism andhypocrisy and irritated by the Indian callousbureaucracy, opportunistic politics andstandardization of corruption at all walks of life,T.R. Rajasekharaiah was compelled to resort to thewriting of realistic and satirical poetry. Althoughhe had been writing his poems since 1960s, andwritten more than half the number of his poems inGulbarga, where he was metaphorically exiled from themain campus, he had not come out with any collectionof poems. He was rather adamant that his poetryshould be published in America, but unfortunately it
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was not possible, again due to his lethargy andindifference to his own fame. We, his students,colleagues and admirers, therefore, brought out acollection of some of his poems entitled Desert Bloomsin 1986, on the eve of his retirement from GulbargaUniversity, Gulbarga. The present anthology containsall the poems of his earlier collection in additionto a few others including the beautiful translationsof two popular Kannada poems.
Dr. Rajasekharaiah was one of the brilliantscholars and Professors of India and my Supervisorfor Ph.D., on Shakespeare’s Last Plays. I consider itto be an honour to be his Ph.D. student andcolleague. He recognized my philosophical bent ofmind and serious nature and allowed me to be hisstudent and colleague – a fact that was rare anddifficult. Many other Ph.D. seekers approached himand within no time were scared away by his rigorousscholarship and ran away from him. I was lucky enoughto stand the rigours of his nature and scholarshipand could emerge as the only, in fact the first andthe last Ph.D. student under his guidance.
I have collected these poems according to hiswish, when he was alive and therefore I have thesatisfaction of returning the debt that is due to myguru, whom I not only revered but also loved deeply,in spite of his idiosyncrasies. I have tried toimmortalize him academically.
On the whole T.R. Rajasekharaiah's poetry may bedescribed as cerebral and easily invites comparisonwith similar poetry of Nissim Ezekiel, Jayanta
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Mahapatra, Shiv K. Kumar and others. One may easilysee the evidence of his wide reading and scholarship,extensive travel all over the Western world, deepthinking and keen observation of human nature andsociety around him and super-sensitivity, articulatedin his poetry.
His poetry may be sub-classified into fourcategories: one, philosophical or reflective; two,satirical; three, humorous and four, romantic. Thestudents of Indian English poetry can study hispoetry fruitfully by comparing and contrasting himwith other poets of India for their research. Hispoetry has, no doubt, enriched the realm of IndianEnglish poetry.
Basavaraj [email protected]
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Contents
1. The Cow’s Tale2. Hunger3. The Choice4. The Chicken5. A Prayer6. Upon a Pretty Girl Passing7. Pigs8. Diploma in English Speech9. The Lover10. Love11. The Rain12. The Face.13. The Journeys14. A Romantic Poem15. In the Café
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16. A Morning17. Mother-Earth18. Stock-Taking19. The Moving Hand20. Imagination21. The Crescent Moon22. Misalliance23. Hercules Did Not Come This Way24. The Locusts25. Spirit’s Cancer26. An Affair27. Homecoming28. Gods29. Beauty and Bacteria30. Desert Blooms31. The Asses32. A Tale of a Tailor33. Mine the Pity Alone34. Paris35. The Muted36. The Spinsters37. The Family Honour38. The Passing Show39. The Black Crows40. Not Death the Matter41. Truth like the Sea42. Not for Us43. The Urgent Need44. A Threnody Unmelodious45. Lines by the Roadside of an Arduous Journey46. The Turn of the Card47. Two Halves48. Protest49. Paradoxes
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50. The Melancholy Monarch51. Theme of Sorrow52. Bitterness53. Valour54. Patriotism55. Clock56. Regret57. The Poetic Theme58. Longings59. To my Son 60. The Onion61. Achilles in a Modern Poem62. The Man Who Was Afraid63. No Gay Songs These64. Too Much in the Sun65. For Us Moths66. The Tropical Jungle67. Grief68. The Giant in the House69. The Poetic Prison70. Yudhisthira’a Lie71. Futility72. Blasphemy73. Pensive Lines74. Our Duty Alone75. Of a Question76. Gods and Apes77. On Another Death78. In Hopkins’s Company79. A Scene80. Physics and Metaphysics81. The Fish and the Ring82. Copper Coins and the Gold Unnegotiable83. Living in Gulbarga
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84. The Lilliputians85. The Collective Man86. The Killer Sun87. The Romantic Agony88. So Little Little89. Blessed are the Stupid90. Neither Holy nor a Sonnet91. Our Spirituality92. Of Heaven and Hell93. A Question. 94. Of Hate95. Regret96. Nothing We Can Do97. A Prayer Unpious98. To the Pair of Eyes Unopened.99. The Spiders
1. The Cow’s Tale1.
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1. In the land known as Karnataka Glistening in the bosom of the earth, There lives a cowherd called Kalinga, Whose style of life is beyond words.
2. Amidst the forests among the hills He had raised a tiny cattle pen And lives he there, the cowherd Kalinga, Whose ways of life exceed description.
3. The inmate cows of the forest pen Grazed all day on the verdant hills, Drank the sweet liquid of the stream And roamed among the peaceful glades.
4. When evening stirred their offspring’s memory, Moving to the tune of the jingling neck-bells, Skipping and jumping and dancing gaily, The cows all returned to their quiet home.
5. Ambah! The tender calves would shout At the rapturous sight of the mother’s face And rush to suck the eager udders To fill their hungry souls with glee.
II.
6. Rising early with the crack of dawn Kalinga had his bath in the stream, And decking his forehead with the fragrant mark, Would do his long hair into a neat little bun.
7. Sitting under the young mango tree,His breath and fingers playing the flute,
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The cowherd would pause and softly shout,Calling the herd of cows to his side.
8. Ganga, run up here, please! O Gowri come!Double up, O you dear Tungabhadra!Kamadhenu, come on first, my child,So he would name them all in love.
9. At the cowherd’s affectionate callThe entire herd would scramble up to him,And yielding all their milky treasuresFill the immense shining pot.
III.
10. Close-by in a hollow mountain ravine Verging on the thick-spread forest, There was a Tiger called Arbhuta Roaring in a long unfulfilled hunger.
11. Growing in his terrible anger As the Tiger tore down the hill, The entire heard of frightened cows Broke out in panic and scattered to run.
12. One cow was there named Punyakoti, Her mind filled with thoughts of her child Goading her on to a very brisk trot, Strode home eager her offspring to feed.
13. Ah! At last a sumptuous meal for me, Exclaimed the wicked Tiger with a grin,
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And wheeling around with lightning speed, Stood in front of the poor little Cow.
14. How I’ll pounce in a trice on thee And how strike down thy delicious belly To grab the lovely dish in there! Screamed the heartless beast of prey.
15. Please, O Tiger, list to a plea; My little child in the pen is waiting hungry; A minute grant me to suckle her and come back; So begged the Cow called Punyakoti.
16. Bah! Said the Tiger, Thou art a liar! If, when starving, I let go my meal, Thou wilt escape and never wilt return, Replied the Tiger in pitiless logic.
17. Truth, said the Cow, is our father and mother, Truth is our world and our kith and kin; And if we break the word we give The Lord God does not approve it.
18. A promise made to the Killer Tiger To return promptly after suckling thee, I’ve come for a last look of thee And must return, Child, to the Tiger soon.
19. Must thou die, O mother mine, And leave me an orphan kid forlorn? O please for my sake change your mind And stay with me please, pleaded the calf.
20. Never can I break my plighted word,
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Never can I think such wicked thoughts, In honest faith will I return quick And my pledge redeem, and this is final.
21. Whose breast then, Mother, shall I suckle? In whose love warmth shall I live? By whose side shall I sleep in peace? Whom will I have for my love and care?
22. O mothers and sisters and cousins! O aunts and kin of my own mother, This here orphan motherless child From now on your own baby will be.
23. Ram her not, please, when found in front, Kick her not, please, when close behind, Look upon her all as your own child, This now orphan motherless child,
24. And thou shalt stray not to the forest edge, Thou shalt not go close to the hill, Be thou ever in the midst of the land, For the cruel tiger will be prowling around.
25. Alas! My child, thou hast become an orphan, For now I am for the Tiger’s jaws, Our bond of love will sever now, O let me hold thee to me once more.
IV.
26. Leaving her child in the pen behind
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The Cow then trotted briskly along And standing at the cave’s dark entrance Said to the Tiger in anxious tones.
27. Here the tendons and here the meat, The warm blood of my heart here; O thou take these ruthless Tiger And for thy wicked joy devour all.
28. At these words of the cow, Punyakoti The eyes of the Tiger filled with tears, The Lord God will not approve my conduct, Killing and eating this noble lass.
29. Thou art, O Cow, my own blood-sister, What do I gain by killing thee? So saying, the Tiger ran to the cliff And he flung himself to die.
*****(Translated from a famous Kannada song by ananonymous poet. The song is of general study andknowledge.)
2. Hunger (‘Hasivu”, from Rudrakshi,1961, done into English)
Too long the sibylline living for agesTo devour all the earth’s food,Long the unnumberable summer odysseysTo drink up all its water.O for once to be the Giant Bake
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To continue the entire feast;And for once the Sage AgastyaTo gulp down all its seas!Life in this six-foot hutmentTantalizes the mindWhen passions for the palace earth(Like the wheel of Ixion)Torture the ardent soul.O for once to be the Giant HiranyakshaTo grab the whole of the globe(But I wouldn’t be that heartless foolTo merely hide it in the sea!)
For vaster than the stature and buildOf giants of epic and mythI’d grow in power of sinew and glandTo drag the earth like a starved lionAnd catch it in a nookFor huge mouthfuls to tear by the hour(In between the immense hunksThe oceans to wash them downAnd thickly wooded jungles.For the occasional pickles.)The fruits of the perpetual springs to comeInfantly hid in the roots,The golden cheese of the juicy sap(Shy at the dressing mirror)Deep inside the calls of the earthI’ll pounce and jawAnd sink my lusty teeth into the rounded fleshOf succulent farms and fields,Sipping the wine of streams and rivers,While all the time on a side-dish for saladWould come in the verdure woods.
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The belly filling earth at length finishedI’ll stretch my hands for the delicious dessertUp on the silver platter the skyAnd snatch the while pudding topped with cream,The full delightful moon.I shan’t certainly bolt her in hasteNor bite into her in manners crude,But like a child’s dainty sweet-mint(Or like the enduring chewing gum)Roll her around in my raptured mouthAnd gently suck her sweetness in.
When at last the repast is over,The delectable burp issues,I’ll run my tongue on my honeyed lipsTo lick away the last lees in(And spread the sky for an ample bed,With the clouds covering me for warmthAnd the winds singing lullaby,)Then stretch my limbs for a long siestaRight through a day of Brahma.
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The positive is positiveBy virtue of being the opposite
Of negativeEnough to encompass it.
As health is the powerTo absorb unhurt
The powerThat makes unhealthy;
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So good is that knowsItself in its strength
To acceptWhat is bad,
As the day is the lengthMeasured enough
To coverWhat is night.
(3-4-1975)
3. The ChoiceIf I came back again to the earthAnd I can, Thou Great Cosmic Director,In human form have my birth,I am not, like some, particularThat I be allotted a territoryWhere the mind is fearless or knowledge free.
Those things are good, I do not question.We all have souls and their godly firesNeed their own special gases to burn.But we also have many darknesses in usThat lights of the body alone can dispel,Lit by touch, sound, sight or smell.
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Therefore, I pray, if I am here again,Let me be given some blessed countryWhere pleasures of sense are not a sin,Where women are not veiled and sex is free,Where the wealths of the earth are not cast awayFor the penury of a heaven of a distant day.
(30 Nov. 1972)
4. The ChickenThe chicken you are,My dear,Rolling on your juicy tongueAnd roof of the mouth,Fried in the special technique of the SouthWith its lungHad once lustily sungThe same words that brought usTogether here;Know the inevitable ticklingRousing the sanguineSense,The call and the impatience,The waitingFor the meetingTo lull the rage to rest.
The best Part of it, the chef presses,Is the breast.
Now the blood along our veins
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Carrying vitamins down the supply linesTo proteinizeLife in us,Quickening,StiffeningTo raise the stageFor the grand finale,Do you see, do you feel,Was the élan vitalOf the hardened,StiffenedThing on the table?
Eyes blind, senses dead,It was bredTo be so dressed.Eyes open yet blind,Senses alert yet dead,We do not see, we do not feel,We too are bred to be ever so dressed,To raise a stageThat the eternal maleAnd the eternal femaleMay eat usAnd stiffenAnd quickenFor the cosmic game of love.
(Feb 1972)
5. A Prayer
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My three year old son, after morning bath,Passed in daily ritual, into the worship room,Made his greeting,Gently depositingThe flower at the feet of the little idolThat represents the family notion of God,And was heard praying thus:Be thou wise, please, and great and good.My wife laughed and said:Child, you should say: make me so.Nay, a minute, I butted in:He is right, though unknowing;The blessing he should seek, God needs more.My wife gasped at the blasphemy,And spluttered: How could you!It’s very simple, dear, I replied:If God were wise and great and good,Would we have all this stupidity,All this meanness, this much evilIn the power of man?Somewhere ha he lost his strength,So our prayer should truly be: God may recover His old virtues.
(12 Nov, 1972)
6. Upon a Pretty Girl Passing
My God! There are men around here,Who, when a pretty girl passes by,Have not the soul to stand and stare
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And in sigh or sob pay earth her fee!For what, I pray, is a maid’s beautyBut the noblest gift of God to man,More than flowers and star-decked sky,The distilled essence of sun and moon?
And these eyeless mouths with cockroach fingersBusily scratch the wayside dustbinsFor faggots to warm their shivering skins,While the radiant angel skips down the laneHolding aloft the torch of lifeTo inflame the light of immortal souls.
(30Nov. 1972)
7. Pigs
Where do they get their solid senseOf immortality, certainty, assurance,These pigs, my Lord?The flowers tremble on the slight breeze.Even the sea strings shiver.The sky is ever astir.But upon this giddy earthWhose volcanoes are whirling the atoms,They yet build their moral immortalitiesWith the sublime strength of permanence.
(10 Nov 1972)
8. Diploma in English Speech
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Words upon a time were magic spellsThat drew a rabbit from the hat;Now they’ve become electric bellsThat tinkle the ears of the cat.
Once with them the human mindThe Persian carpet rode;But now they are well devisedLike milestones along the road.
Once they baited the earth and sky,The sun and the moon and the stars;Now they are the tuppenny ha’pennyExchangeable for candybars.
One little word had once us ledTo fairies, angels and gods;The gods are dead, the fairies have fled,For the D.E.S. wields the rods.
(10 Nov 1972)
9. The Lover
That night when we discussed the ghosts of loversAs under the screaming shadows of frightened treesWe sped on rickety wheels drawn by a sleepy nag,Is dear to me. I often travel in the coach againListening to words of deathless passionDying always. In my bosom is a white marbled domeAround which are patterned shadows, playful
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Children whose crafty fancyRejects the dark dead body in the house.
I wonder if you and I could be ghosts so,And shed this graceless weakness, fearAnd hesitance, and on vast open moon-swept fieldsMake love, silent in its naked beauty,Like the earth, never failingTo keep the journey of the miraculous angel,Home-seeking, bright and un-blind. Sleep-walking,We shall find the dark shyly smiling palaceQuivering in the distant light of expectationOf swift sure silent steps seeking in painThe deadly joy sheltered among the tombs.
(1959)
10. Love
I shall laugh half a minute;The broken bough will yet take timeTo reach the winter dust.
What is love, but a challengeAccepted; a game played with rulesWhose deviser sits outside onThe far dais sheltered from the sunBy a brilliantly coloured gallery roof?
What is love, but a complimentHonestly paid, if oft falsely received;A painful bow to a blind godWith the bespectacled eye
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(Here a nasty adult, elsewhere a hasty child?)
To worship is the duty the bookHas enjoined on us all.What is the idol is a goat with hornsOr an ape with tail?(Our acceptance matters, naught else.)
(1960)
11. The Rain
The rainIs an act of God.(Oh, the modern science!)And all acts of God
Should make us happy,
BecauseThey serve to remind usThat this world is ruled(Oh, the wrangle for votes!)
By God and not men.(1960)
12. The Face
Her face is the bewitching princessOf storied beauty, imprisonedIn the giant castle of the ugly necromancer,Her deliriously crocked body,
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Awkward, unsurely generous as linesOf the infant’s pencil on paper,Making, trying hard to make a shapeCombining with Newton’s invisible law;
Hieroglyphical figures conjoinedIn drunken fantasy, those limbs,Wild as anarchy, cruel as an old, old doll,Dissipating as puzzle that won’t join.
But, my God, the face!(1960)
13. The Journeys
BywaysTortuous, magically winding,Or like what the run-over dog makes,Or like the prints after the desert winds,
Nightmarish, laden with fear-Ful stumblings, sobs, prayers,Tears
I have traveled.
Thy storyI do not know. Maybe
Someone had brought you right up toThe platform;
Someone had brought youThe ticket, too, may be.You did not know the queue,The crush, the gangster rush,
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The slow, doubtful stepping,The breathing in of someone else’s carbon,
And sweat that crumpled your soul.
(1960)
14. A Romantic Poem
To the throne whose legs pillar history,Dazzling a million eye,At whose swollen feet time crooks its knee,Laden with medals, garlands of ever fragrant homage;
To the great tear of Alexander’s dreamThat sighed at the vanity of its gain;
To the hundred years, life’s ancestral property,Blind hands hugging a dark unresponsive doll;
To the gifts of the clock and the calendar,Imagination and motion;
To the fruits of labour or charity,Hard-earned wage or worth-exceeding wind-fall,The makings of scheme or the throwings of chance,
One moment,One sharp, silent, fleeting moment,In the eye.
Thine the main stream of eternal timeAnd being;And the rest is all idle straggling.
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(1960)
15. In the Café
Two young tousle-headed boysPress their nose on the window-paneAnd peep.(I can see the impatience with timeThat makes them stand on the toe-tip.)Along the pavement kaleidoscopically patternArresting disgusting lovely fleshly legs.(I can see the mortal hurryThat swelled out of baby-shoesAnd shrank into brassieres.)
With a glass of beerSoftly rousing the lazy joys of the soul,I create a sliceOf the gay Paris world of LondonOr Chicago in a shabby little Indian town.
I can wee the alcoholCoursing gladly, madlyThrough the veins (conduits) of that pretty littlething,AS she pushes her hamsWith a sudden violent tenderness,Forward bendingOn the tired cushions of the sofa,Coquettishly, in tantalized abandon, gracefully,
Horribly, intoxicatingly, prostitutely.
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The amorous fingers(The dogs have caught the wind,)Kept the while sternly on the ridge of the woodenback,Slip in a clever minute,And flow,Wondering, wandering, imploring, dazzled,
Dazzling by their adventures.
The countless faces I could have kissedFleet before the eye,Floating on the frothy air.
I can see the pimpNonchalantly sipping his brandy in the corner,All staid and respectable, and looking far away,Lest the rest should knowThat the drink is on the house.
(But I know.Darkly, with amazing brilliance the conspiracy goeson.H does not know.)
(1956)
16. A Morning
Bright as a child mischievingWith the miraculous nipple of life source, Light gas spread on the morning earth.
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On the smoky screen of the skyTrees stand flat, dull, stillLike men awaiting orders.The game has started again, shamelessIn its magnificent monotony,Black repulsive crows hop as on sticks,Peck and hop, or catch a distant smell or cry,And fly,Loose unloved thoughts of an idle hour.The dogs chase each otherTill a lonely spotted lamb strays along,Offering a better vocation for their instinct.Around the half-inch pipe of life-giving waterLife waits in patient vesselsArranged in sulky queues, Like bottles on thecompounder’s tale,Offerings in a barbaric temple.The white-washed houses stand stark as death,A couple of birds, beautiful in their sudden flight,Dart in, visitants from another world,Memory-like, and quickly wheel out,Like postmen after dropping the post.
(1960)
17. Mother Earth
The earth is not the particularPlace of man. Where the humans starve,The roach, the termite, the rat flourish;The white ant reigns emperor. Organic,Inorganic, all substance yields him tribute.Is man with his politics the darling
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Child of Nature? She loves the brute, Her most milk for the mindless brat,Crawling and dependent; the aging motherWho is secret fears the academic sunAnd hates, her established sway menacedBy his independent love with her ownDifferent foreign ways; the cradle thatRocked the infant to sleep ejects the adult.
(30 Nov 1972)
18. Stock-Taking
The power by which the dream wasOf plucking the stars of heaven to earthIs gone. Forty years of heaping flowersUpon the grimy toes of this rock-pieceFondly shaped into an idolHave dried up the cup not inexhaustibleLike Krishna’s gift. These ruthless guests,Difficult to please, had to be pleased,Housed and fed at a perpetual board, lest a curse beleft behindAdding to the ravages of the occupied land.The lamps are broken. Now would the mythic birdSift the oil, wick and shards of such deadly mixAnd relume the light to life again.
(12 Nov 1972)
19. The Moving Hand
Five young men squatted under the pole
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Across the furrowed brown roodOn the roadside,Little white kerchiefs spread on the dustyMounds.The marble rolls deftly traversingThe tiny dimples and climbingThe sloppy ascendancies equallyTinyReaching the other oneTwoFinger lengthsToo farFor the winning trick.
The eye rolled,Gathering the moss of timeBack into time,Carpet rolling after the guest has departedThe dreary special hour of the stop-less watchResist-lessly ordered.The scent from the far off minute sentNotes fractured cast fitfully on the curdled breeze.The years with their months with their daysAnd they with their hours with their minutesAre pealed and hung on the peg.The journey’s dust slides under the shower,I grew crablike into the weight of growthTo lift and drop it, the beard and the gum and therheum.The prison shadows creak outwardWide into the sunshine.The heaven that surrounded myInfancyIn fancy
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Flashes along the inward eye mockingly,Like a shout in the crowd,Unidentified, unreachable, teasing,Resembling the voice once beloved.
Then the accounting.The deficit budgetOf our balance sheet,The three lettered wasAnd the two lettered is,The loss,And O the difference to me!And then the longer will beThat may never be;Gathering, gathering, gatheringThe moss:Que sera sera; Alas!
(6 Feb 1972)
20. Imagination
While I fill my sunny lungsWith black tobacco smoke,Aegean islandsRomp in the morning sunTickling the frigid sea.
Tiny jasminesIn my arteriesDarken,
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While down the NileGold boats sailPlucking roses of light.
In the measured ravaged lotTurned into plotsFor tombsSpecters take their walkFor their moonlit trystFlourishing lilac springs. (22 Dec 1972)
21. The Crescent Moon
Myths and verses builtAround the moon are legion.Our land unlike the romantic WestHas made the gentle shape a man,Giving his two wives.On nights such as these,In this grousy sour mood,He is insufferably crescent,And I have it in my heartTo brandHim cuckold,For his horns are so pronouncedAnd the secret sorrow of his soulSo dark on his brow,Poor fellow! (15 Dec 1972)
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22. Mes alianceEarth to the uncommon sorrows of mindHas no special ease. Her medicine chestCan touch the stomach, the red corpuscles,The juicy glands. She keeps her kitchenEfficient, her pantry full, her accounts clear,Her violins melodious; an able housewife.Unimaginable time ago a father’s sacred willUpon a choice apt for a bygone wayTestamented this bond. Growing time bringsNew designs and tastes, disfiguring the formsAnd measures in use, needs insatiateAt the board so sweet and nourishingOnce in the distant past, unaltered. We pineIn hungers utterly foreign to her old orthodoxArts, consecrated to the native godsCrawling on their baby limbs upon the basemen floor,And her solicitous matron heart carpeting the hallFor softness. Our studies, our drawing roomsAnd libraries, the chambers up the stairs,Treasured with the plunders of empires of art,Histories of refined research galvanizedInto forms of the choicest shape and sound –A realm beyond our ken,Across the three lines uncrossable,Lies unshared, unkempt, indecorate,A lonely bed for the soul to stretchIts songs, its dreams, its sacred sorrowsUnwhispered, unheard, unaccompanied.We grieve among our luminous chambers in doubleGloom, hearing from far down the stairsThrough the darkened corridors the music
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Of her wifely service rising, unreaching, sadAs a child’s generosity for an adult’s need,For all our love, for all our will,The smile we bear n our noble lipsNeither knocks on a door nor opens it,And the hollownesses that empty the houseNor sound nor silence can fill (29 Nov, 1972)
23. Hercules Did Not Come This WayThe land that wrested light from godsTo plant suns around the earthIs now bound upon the rock. PathsWith so much love’s labour pavedTo turn inorganic stone and bovine fleshAngel-ward, with footfalls resoundOf cats, wolves, rats and complacent pigsBurrowing under the ground.Dark and shine, the year roundIndustriously their craft buildsAnthills and dust castlesFortress-like bastioningAn empire on which neither sun nor moon sets.Engines march for them, machines turn,Their legions roll on life’s thoroughfaresAnnexing, colonizingAll the lands of human endearvour.Under the broad sun their scepter waves,Among shadows their vessels keep the chant.The feline bounce,The sneaky grasp,
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The clever wiping of the stained handOn the slumbering neighbour’s shirt,Are a perfected art,Taught by night and practiced by day.
We haven’t come away from the daysWe flourished the knotted handkerchiefAround the traveller’s throat on the highwaysIn the name of belief.We still burn wife, child and friendAnd all those also whom we touch;Only with a greater finesse.Our arm, our tongue, our dexterous finger Serve for the ancient cloth,Trained to throttle the next man’s comfortFor our own quick profit.And we have enough intelligenceTo call it by a holy nameAnd swear it by the sacred writ.For gods there are for every beast,Logic for every lunacy,To sanctify and temple and celebrateAll our feelings, all our thinking, all our actAnd Hercules did not come this way.
(25 Nov 1975)
24. The Locusts
The earth is theirs and the skyTheirs; these locustsThat blot the sun, the rain, the wind
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From the roots and kill To live.Theirs also the will,The power and the gloryOf the empire that is;Theirs too is the kingdom that isTo come;For they know, Father, what they do;The piaculative pence do findThe bartenders of bottled grace;They will wash their hands.
Upon the television screen the professorial headSapiently concluded God is dead.The rose is dead;The thorny crown fits our head.The theory of expanding universe,Ever dislocating the still centre,Carves the fluid shape,Eternally our mortality,A tender steak for those of the Rockies,A tanduri chicken for the Himalayans,A Turkish dish for the gods of the Olympus,To be eaten in whispers.
The wheeling knife in cyclic twistMakes a scarecrow of Christ,That the sparrows shall not sit,That locusts may devour all of it.
25. Spirit’s Cancer
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More abundant on this earthIs spirit’s cancer.The thousand sights and sounds of pain(Four little tiny thingsHurt the tender Buddha.)Every day we gulp in,IndigestibleIn the simple faith of the soul,The chemistry of being rots.We can keep the dust and the tar,The helix-altering acids out,But what can screen the cruel act,Heartless word and crafty passion,Infesting space all around,Roads and shelters and public placesWherever man touches man?
Even a pebble wickedly castCan be known to hurt the cosmic plan.Yet in great virtue our clean-bodied fliesCarry in their feetAll the lethal pestilence,All the maiming disease,All the retarding lies.Must the factory of one’s own joyFill with death all neighbouring sky?Cannot one’s heaven be wonWithout a hell in the next man’s yard?Where is that wordLong long ago heard,First chant of all human religion;May all living things be happy?Where is that menWho once here at every dawn
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Roamed in search of the hungry antsWith grains of sugar in his hand?
(18 Nov 1972)
26. An Affair
I fell in love with MayaKubitskayaOne hundred and twenty - two yardsAnd forty five rows of seats away.
All the time I kept the name,Rolling the resonant consonantsLike sweet centred peppermintsAround the mouthAnd all the sides of the tongue.
Across the translucent smoky etherOf the Radio City Music HallLight rays from the galaxiesBillion light years awayDanced down the aisles of spaceTo roll upon my earth.
Dark continents were set aflameAnd burnt the songless humid junglesAll over the forty yearsMantling my unclad time.Lamps unsealed their drowsy lips,The present trembling momentUnfurled its ancestral wings
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And rode to bridge the layered aeonsBetween me and the fumbling star.
(17 Dec 1972)
27. Homecoming
When, Oh, whenShall this dark burn?The clouds showerThe nettled road, the towerRaise its head so lost in the vexing turn?
When, Oh, whenShall these steps turn againHomeward,The bird,Pining in tongue-less pain?The swine, the boar, the hog,Vulture, hawk, kite and the dogThe millipede, the snake with the sting,They are all abed,Well-fed,At peace,In the peaceThat at least is within understanding.
This argosy,This quest for the flower,This odyssey,This search for the tower,This saga for the elusive arch,This bearing of the torch,
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O my lady of the smile,
The difficult promise, the endless mile,The doubtful step, the forbidding fence,The wrong turn, the incorrect inference,The point of no return,The pulling wheel, the shrinking bed,The thorny crown, the vanishing fruitAnd water,
For the son?
O traveler lost in the night,Return, the sky is now bright,
The song blared from the hotel loudspeaker.
After such knowledgeWhat faith?After such deathWhat life?
The wise laugh over their wine glasses.(Feb 7. 1972)
28. GodsThe darknesses they all kissAt least give them a good night’s blissOf rest for the debauched limbs.And other joys abound;Song and dance and the jocundWine and warmth of the silken arms.
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Even that immobile eyeless rockOften drops a flowery signTo give them courage or warning.So comforting in indecision.Their freedoms are easeful. LabourlessIs their relief for the annoying bladder,The congested throat, the importunate animal urge.
This light could have been kinder.At this vacuous temple we tenderOur worship unblessed,Depositing dear blood, flesh and boneUpon the ceremonial stoneTo be eaten behind our backUnacknowledged.The motorcade will roll along,Our hand-woven offerings picked upCasuallyBy hands unrecognizable,To be thrown upon an urchin’s handGaping in the crowd,Theatrically.The soul in our admiring eyeHardly touches the dust raised behind.The dazzling rays strike us blind.We dare not even askTo weep.In the fantasy of the magical prismTeas turn into lamps,Confusing the power of sorrow,Anaestheticising our cramps.The hypnotic arrowGrants us the false sleep.Are we to know
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What jungles have to burnPest-infested?But the serpent’s anger turnOn us, striking our handsome frameInto ridiculous uglinessFor the barking dogs.An epic gameAmong the ramming goatsCrushing the luckless little roseThat just chanced to bloom thereAnd Homer was a blind singer.
(13 Oct. 1972)
29. Beauty and the Bacteria
Farida is a beautiful girl.Not all the countless atoms that whirlTo capture the fragrance of the roseFor the catharsis of the noseCan equal her single curl.Fluttery along the margin of the deep pool,Her eyeThe daffodils are all over herPensive frame, astir,Distributing the electric charmCircling around her rosy armTo refill the dried cups on land and sky.
Walking between the chrysolite barsDown the aisle of the gaping stars,She feeds. The meteorCan stand and wait no longer.They rush headlong on service bent
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Through the golden horn and the silver gateWaking the Charming Prince at rest.The earth grows introspect,Time turns around.Lays its head on its armsAnd sleeps.
But alas!The winged angels have their club feet.And the singing mermaid has to eat.The earthy mush is there,The herbal spices, salt and pepper,Sugar and the adulterated milk,And much else of the same ilk.That is really hard to pass,And then there is the magicOf he irresistible garlicThat holds the soul in fee.
What a pity!
For then the daffodils all over herClassic frame begin to wither,And what could bewitch the romanticWhen nightingales coo their melody,Turns into the stuff of a limerick,When the owl hoots its parody.
(16 Oct, 1972)
30. Desert Blooms
Beneath the killer bronze of metallic summer,Where the throttling grains of sand suck and squeeze,
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Where even the providential oases are mere dreams,And mirages are persecutions of the actual hour,Miracles occur too, or of God or of Nature.
An osmosis beyond the science of botany.
Under the life-stifling layers of sandThat holds life in this my landAnd here in this state, an arid partOf a brazen continent and this shallow hole,The vital sheets of unseen water, womb of life,That God put beyond the drying power of man’s error,Yet stretch and flow and reach and suckleAnd so flowers bloom in beds of sand.
Maybe an un-drying channel traverses the earthStraight along its spinal column from the antipodes,Where man is still a child of the God of Smiles,Or an immortal umbilicus sustains the flowers,Feeding the plant’s minute veins with living sap.
Yet a mystery, beyond the arithmetic of logic.
Under the tenacious old man on the neck,Whose ruthless thighs, crueler than the stirrups,Yield us less than a tithe of the life-holdingbreath,The whistling gasps do still make melody,However grotesque and cacophonous and shrill,Simply from the elastic repress-less lungs.
A wonder too, beyond the ken of imagination.
(A miracle, a mystery, a wonder!)
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All these, arguably, maintained in arroganceBy ignorance or folly or the human errorOf hiding the pains of failure, an abandon;But that the chance kindness of an unsought love,Like what an accidental stroll of the Buddha found,Or what Columbus stumbled on, or the lamp in thecave,Or like a Livingston’s discovering journey darkInto the heart of a sulking Achilles or a bitterHenchard,Stopped a while, not gently passing on,To chant a song upon the solitary reaperAnd rouse a melody, soft, silent, unheard,Unveiling the silence, mysterious, miraculous,wondrous,Like the silent night hiding the quick day,Like the seen shrouding the yet unseen,To coax, to wheedle, to open and draw out,All this, the miracle, the mystery, the wonderMight have been, yes, might have beenWhat Gray said of many a flowerBorn to blush unseen, wasting its fragranceUpon the desert air.
A faith stirs on both sides of the silent human door,There is yet or may be a garden of springBeneath the arid shroud of sand,Patient for the cuckoo’s amorous noteIn a readiness that is all of the finest piety,Hopeful like the naïve Cinderella fancyFor a wand making a chariot of a pumpkinIn a trust that yet is the heart of humanity.
(9-9-1985)
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31. The Asses
The asses have reached the ultimate goal,Not moving a single space,
While men have blazed an endless trailTo return to the starting place.
Their unshod legs can bear two weights,Their own and that of men;
Their ears can stand the stock of stormAnd the mock of the proverbial pen.
(They have also a longer reaching powerThat men have longed for in vain;
They can easily stretch to bottoms deeperAnd not be drowned in pain.)
They may not be the chosen race of God,There are creatures better in shape;
But if peace be the prize given to the best,The asses have snapped the tape.
Unperturbed they stand, still amidst flux,Masters of the earth and sea;
They ne’er had to be heirs to Hamlet’s cares,Or victims of the question to be.
Darlings are they of grandma Nature,Her noblest gift is their share;
For knowing by instinct wise Imlac’s verdict,They’ve grown a thick hide to bear.
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And while we mean whimper, weep and pray,Unhearing the oft-heard word,
The asses have reached beatitude,Beating the rest of the herd.
(22 Jan. 1972)
32. A Tale of a Tailor
Ruknuddin, in the Station Road,Gents’ Tailor, sat at the sewing wheelAnd pedalled.You can always see him at his postFrom morning eight to evening ten,With breaks for lunch (and the nocturnal rest)And, of course, for the five prayers.
The sight is arrestingI have been stopped short,Struck by lightning, from behind,As if the shout was for me,And looked at the Ramzan skyThe sacred moon to spy.
Like the legends on Ionian templesOr Assyrian shrines of oracles,Prophetic inscriptions minutely engraved,Luring the antiquarian,Or on the canvasses of the Louvre,More mysterious than the Lisa smile,Inviting promising nibbling teasingEntrance to mystery,Has been the board to me:
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Ruknuddin, Gents’ Tailor, Station Road, Gulbarga.
He sits alone, plying the corded wheel,Pushing the yielding cotton between the double jawOf steel;More concentration of philosophical wealThere has not been with the placid anglerNor with the pipe-drawing professor.
Yet, perchance the turning wheelTurns unseen the inner soul,Turning the pages of historyTurningA prince’s pomp to a tailor’s trade.(Most anyone with a name like that oneMust have sat on the Romance throne.)
Ruknuddin, the servant of God(I may be wrong, but that is the meaning of the nameI bet)Now of the medical students,Stationed along a crowded road,Bears not Aaron’s rod,Yet He spells the magic of days bygone,Arabian Nights, princesses of endless yarn,Amorous kings, maidens of the veil,Garden walls, ventures of the sail,Balmy desert skies, dates and palmThe sob of Leila, and the wine of Khayyam,The sands of the Seven Pillars, in his name,Resound the wisdom of the muezzin.The carpet rolls on, the land and the mainRolled in folds, across the fantastic plain
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To honey and milk,To the languishing maidenIn the embroidered silk,Prisoned in the castle of the jinn.
Ruknuddin, with such a name,Could have been,Or was once the King of AbyssinOr some such Empire with an exotic fame;Oases dotting the camelways,Fur and musk and white damask,All that goes to make the maskThat ladies wear in the harem;And men who came from farawayBrought heaps of gems in golden traysAs veiled as the damsels who carried them.
And now along the Station BazaarHe sits adjusting the central barThat sets aright the sewing paceAnd charges thirty for a full-length piece,Ruknuddin is a man of peace,Stolid, stationary and full of ease,But he kicks my soul across the seas,To see him cross the Khyber pass(Protector of the poor, Masha Allah!)Lusting for gold like the Ghazni Boss,Lusting for fame like Baber Khan,Lusting for loot like Nadir Shah,Elephants loaded with his conquerings,Camels his booty from Indian towns,Horses sweating under victims’ crowns,And satin-cushioned palanquinsCarrying, Oh My! The lovely queens
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For his rest of the evening.
And now, what a descent!(He never wears a scent.)His hands are full of oil and dirt,Charging two rupees for a shirt.
Ruknuddin, Ruknuddin,Cousin of Alladin,Builder of the Taj MahalAnd the Golconda wall,Lover in the garden of Shalimar,Raiser of Sikri and the Minar,He who once at a single strokeHad made seven of them croak,Wazir of Alk-raschid, king incognito,Now valet to the medico,Sits on a little stool so lowWith the ingratiating bowSeeking the dandy’s pleasure nowAs once he had sought a better love.
(23 Jan, 1972)33. Mine the Pity Alone
Sir,After all, all this is foreign to my ears,My cells, my electric conduits, my moral chords;An urgent duty of someone else’sSloth or recklessnessI took charge on transfer;
My grammatical,Syntactical, Prosodic,
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Metaphysical,All the innumerableFailings, admitted or provable/
Someone seventeen times great, great, greatIn drunken hospitality fondled the ballet dancerAnd thrust the blood into us.
I can’t deny itOr the sunken veins suffocate.
I would gladly sell this ruined towerIf an Onassis buy for the glory of the press,Or turn into lots for the skyscraperIf the highway would have this new egress.
Now I sit sullen, conjunctingViolentlyA wrong preposition and an intractable verbUrgentlyDemanding what I don’t know.
Who would accept my silence?
The ague struck muscle circularly thumpsFor an answer that must be givenImmediately.Will not ‘in’ do for an ‘on’With for about?Substituting what has beenFor what might have beenIf all the ifs had found their place,Substituting ‘would’ for ‘should’A third alternative to yes or no.
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Filling in the widening blanksRefusing to fill,I move along a circling roadTo a door that never opens,To return to the comfortable seatThat is no longer there.
But Sir,ConsiderThe days filled with the nights, the nightsFilled with the days. Consider the stomachFed with the dreams of the brain, the brainSlaked with the liquid bottle. Consider The moment quickened with the hour to come,The hour come lullabied with the dayThat is gone. Bills paid with assurances,Assurances guaranteed by assurances, one playing cardPropped up with another with another and withAnother that.
Consider the procrustean bed.The prince in exile on the roadsideOf a foreign land and the bowlThe well-fed beggar kindly thrust in front of him,Or the Ixion wheel of the fruitsGoing up and the water down. This was notThe jackal that moistened the bitter drynessWith a philosophical tongue. Hanging downA balance never leveling the bean, consider,The way up and the way down both losingThe un-adjustable little to pay the fee of the ape.
ConsiderOur un-preparedness, our helplessness, our human
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Weakness. Somewhere else the meeting of the board,The chairman’s passing fancy for a brilliant tacticFor the enrichment of the company,The amorous gods on the snow-clad mountains.Consider the orders that pass down swiftOn the angelic wings traversing seventeen millionMiles a second. Consider the resistless entry,The un-refusable deposit, the commandeeredBoard and lodge, the soldier permanently Belittled. Or the camel of the tent.
The passing sweetness beguiles the enduring pain.The compliments, the foreign manners, thehandsomenessSeduce the Cinderella. The bells lull us,The idol enchants. The groans turn hymns.In the mystic trance rocking us to sleepThe monotonous rhythm of the railway trainCradles the soul. All thisSir,Consider.
After all, thisIs not mine, not mineThe heady wine,The subdued music, the witches’ greeting,The slipping stair, the sliding door,The magnificent airborne minute on the sandy floor,The hypnosis, the magic, the ecstasy.
Not mine the doorstep,The crying infant,Forsaken.
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Mine the pityAlone.
34. Paris
Troy isAlways burning, burning, burningThe Aphrodisiac gift (Who knows the better choice?)Ours has yet never been.The shadow under the lightHas ever fallen betweenTurning, turning, turningThe kissSo ardently soughtA shattered glassBetween the motion and the actBetween the desire and the responseBetween the potency and the ascentPremature or stillborn.
The choice was ours (Or was it)Who knows the roads? All the fourStarted at the same beginningAnd met again at the same end.The doors prefabricatedAre all mass-manufactured.Faces and masks are equal.
At my back MenelausPerpetually knocks.It is not the wind at the door.Fear robs the till of the day’s labour,
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A nightly stick up in the dark alley.
Our looks are lovely. Images in the pool lure us.What if our own turn against us and tear us?Diana’s divine shape allures.Birds sing before the horns blow.Flowery arrows of the amorphous godDrive us along the pathsOf rose and wine and dance.
Burning the midnight lampAround the whirl of songCatching the elusive flameTo warm the ague of bones Glowworm lightCold, cold shivering.
We have taken all the care, the wallsArgument strong buttressedPlato, Socrates, Nestor, ViduraKant mortised plastered the BuddhasHung the makers of lightVision-crossing.
But the Greeks are clever. Their giftsRide on wheels smooth into the strengthOf the strongest fortified heart throughThe main avenueWelcome jubilant unopposed hospitably.It’s when we sleep the trapdoorOpens, our belly’s loopholeGapes. Along the straightest routeOur deviations march. We are caughtIn bed
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In idleness depositedOur arms soft silken cornered.
The Gods will be away.Perhaps a feast dayFor Jove’s new nuptialOr Hera’s special worshipper is in lamentThe smiles change. Yesterday’s sweet dreamTurns a nightmare now. ApolloIs angryOr has changed his mind.The day is not ours. The worldHas changed colourWhat omensVisionsMessengers of the all-seeing eye.The morning moods of the Olympian mindsShape the earthen day:If clouds gather it is rain,Or shineIf the god of winds is brisk.
My brother Hector, wise God-fearing,Virtuous, good counseller,Had not seen her.He has not sat under the treeAlong the path goddesses take,Never had to answer,Never to wander.At home, always at home,Father’s ward, mother’s darling.Lucky, lucky, lucky,The siren song never fell on his ears,Cleopatra’s lovely nose has not crept into his
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Dreams.Nor did Circe’s magic poetryBurgle his after-meal siesta.My brother Hector,Valiant upright irreproachable,Dutiful husband, dutiful father,Hands all brown bronze,Arms that hold the spearSo stronglyKnees that never bentWeakly.
As mine have known the gentleDarling wishMelting the bones into songThe darlingThat melts the knees into dream.
I have knownThe fireThe fire that knownMust be knownBurnsI that knowingMust knowTo burn.
Helen too has wept.(7 Feb, 1972)
35. The Muted
Like Orpheus
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Wooing the shadesFrom the Hades
If I had the musicLike SavitriWrenching from the God of DeathThe breath I wouldIf he could fall in loveWith my virtueIf it could live from me to himIf he livesIf I love
I could
The light is goneOil dried up in the begrimed wickThe lamp in shreds
The child incredulousKindles an answer with tearsOf lamentFor the dark of fearsMaking the heart sick.
Wrong ones all the timeThe search must go onWith the very earnestOf the questI could break open the gatesAnd shout and frightenThe God of Death to come to the boyHumble and arms folded
YieldingThe mystic answers.
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I couldBring that fire to all the earthWheeling between death and birthCold, cold, acheRacking the bone,The pain of asking silences the voiceBitter flood chokes the flute.
I see nothing,I feel nothing,
I ask nothing.Taken for a foolBeware the dogI returnTo silenceTo try the tears againIf they could join the pieces.
(8 Feb, 1972)
36. The SpinstersChrist did not wed us,Nor did the flute bewitch our soulsTo the raptures of devotionSuch asMira sang. The divine groomWho captured our sisterAnd mother,Metamorphosing the earthen fire,Spread no net along our path,Turning our melodiesMetaphysical.Waiting listless accursed rocks,The paths we chose of dream or
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Practical,Footsteps of the redeeming GodHave not echoed.Prisoners of castles,Dragons, giants, one-eyed dwarfs,We have never been nor spent the dayWindow resting.Heart spread on the curved roadQuickened by the gallop sound,Though hell should bar the way.
But love we laughed to scorn.The lusty game if we’er did dreamVanished with the morn.We did to the marriage so called of mindsA laughter admitThat mocked its own tears.Love is not love. A verbal witSmelling too much of the masculine armpitFor our tender sense. We’d scream,Leave us our purity unmolested,And give us liberty, we prayed.We hated that mercy that twice accurseth,Once in the giving and then in receiving.Nor Antony’s arms, nor Ulysses’ wit,Nor Romeo’s youthful beard,Nor all the guiles of Don Juan,Nor Byron’s poetic word,Our Trojan wallHas withstood them all.We have always beenToo, too wary for the Greek gift.Invincible our spirits have stood.Our Alexandrian feet have hurled to dust
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Perfumed Arabia, golden Byzantium,The diamond-studded Ind. Not throne,Nor mink,Nor lace or pearl, nor dance,Nor drink,Has caught us off our guard.The sage, the dashing hero, the bard,Song, whisper, or winkThe daring twist or the swaying music,Turned into stone with one look At our trim immaculate face.We have no such nonsense.Our garden fenceHath no crevice for the crawling snake.No apple can tempt us, vegetable or metallic,Nor the golden stag,Nor the flower of the far-off land.
Not for us your young LochinvarRiding from the west,Nor the earnest Bediveres,Nor the knight of jest.Our service book is efficiently kept,With correct figures, marks and numbers.Our heads are held high:Never abashed or shy,And always without fear,We have shown up the folly of both man and Nature,Disproved the proofs, arguedThe arguments out of books, and concludedIncontrovertiblyThat God has bitterlyRegrettedWhatever he has been before
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And wants to be one of us hereafter.
(20 Feb. 1972)
37. The Family Honour
I have all this inherited:The walls, the rooms, the furnishment,The fittings, the space, the compoundAround.All this is mine and all I am is this;The successes and the failures(They call them assets and liabilities)Are those testamented and determinedInto article, guidance, commandment,Sacred last word.This is my bed,These my cups and saucers.All this I must use,I have not what I would choose.
Where my Jeremiah, is the freewill,If I don’t or untilAll this sellAnd turn into cash or a more profitablePlot in the commercialDistrict of the town,And face the frown?
I am good, I think so,Or at least want to be so,A dutiful obedient son,Never refusing to own
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All that has been beforeAnd keep the family honour.
But look at the night gownI must sleep inAnd the cat and the dog and the prestigious horseThat must be maintained in a perpetual farceFor the benefit of the neighbour’s gossipOr the periodical inspector’s slip.
I long for the proverbial shilling,Willing,With all my heart,For all the stingAnd all the prick and the dart,To be able to say That I love the homeless wayBetween an unseen fatherAnd an unloving mother.In the birthBetween an unknowing heavenAnd an unrecognizing earth,To be an orphan.
(13 March 1972)
38. The Passing Show
The show is over; upon the double-edged thresholdFeet mark the returning impress;The way in and the way out both expressionsOf a magic that has a way of commutingThe pain of the one for the joy of the other.We would sort the difference in vain
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Understanding darkly depositedAmong the housewifery cans of monthsOf husbanding and saving,Inadequate for the changing of the urgentEvent. Yesterday’s wealthTurns so soon the poverty of the daySuch careful plans all night prepared for.The words that held the Delphic wisdomFor the moment that has passed,Turned with such ardour,Produced with so much toil, remembered awhile,With so much sweetness, are but scrawlingsOn the dust where we sat for an eveningPicnic and doodled. The wind blow them out,The passing bullock feet erase them.We would hold this minute like a precious dollAnd carry it home across the gate,But the counter’s verbatim has a board writToo large to ignore, too hard to implore.
(13 March 1972)
39. Two Black Crows
The two black crowsPoised on the dry twig of the summer treeLicked dry dog bone like after the winterRobbery moisten their parched skinWith the bland warmth of the sex coalsEver ablaze winter summer autumn spring.
The labyrinth of multidimensional growthSpreads beneath sitting on the edgeLike fingers registering a dancer mood
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Expressive darkly.
The black catIn the intellectual room is inPerpetual motion
Escaping the unceasing searchBy the length of the fingernail.But the fingers know no rest.The dancing feet know no pause.The shadows too rest not from their goblin gamePatterning misleading pathways of spectral lightsTo revive despairing motion to renewed fitsOf recurring despair.
To be capable of speechYet to be given to silence
To able to stirTo move to turn to ride to gallop alongYet to be given to bed
To be able to beYet given not to be.
That the soul’s incorporeal lightShould sickly tremble from muscular painsIts timeless fireSwamped beneath the ashes of transient fuel.
The horse driving the riderDepositing the prince
On the roadside of the foreign landIncommunicable
Unrecognized lost,A sorry adventure. Perhaps a timid fear,A silent sigh, a frigid footnoteIn an academic page, sums it all up,
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All the agony and all ecstasy,All the fervent preparation, all the franticindustry,The prayers, the hopes, the strife, the toil,The Homeric drama. A sad doll for timeTo play with. Decoration for the wall of history.
For a hunger that must be fed, the melancholyOf intransient imagination has its storeOf cloying sweetness, the candy bars and chocolatesSweet centred coinages of feminine feeling.
Nor is the classic peace of masculine wisdom,The technique of fear, subjection, trust, here.The play varies from age to age, country to country.Modes change, direction changes.
The longing for belongingTo fitTo do wellWhatever the roleVillainousHeroicFarcicalIs here,So painful.For the stones pursue after hoursAnd the jeers dress the breakfast with dishOr hound the Jew off the stage even in the event.
(14 March 1972)
40. Not Death the Matter
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Not death the matterThat infuriates the powerless thought.It’s the manner:The travesty of the bloom that foughtThe perverse verminMinutely invisible:The parody of the love that wroughtA golden temple to house the frame;The monkey, the quibble,The burlesque, word game,The witticism that with ruthless skillSums up the entire blood of a heartInto a condensed pill;That is the hurt.
Not the tragedy;That is so noble. One could graspThe wandering winds in a moment’s tiny claspAnd be an Olympian GodFor a moment.That were not bad.It’s the wrinkles, the crow’s foot,The sagging folds,The grammarless mumble, the stick,The wobble,The limerickCommandeering the comic rhyme;That infuriates the powerless thought.
That just a year afterThe soulful ardour of OthelloShould end up in a Hamletian sigh(So courageous, so philosophical),To say unnervedly:
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I had kissed the hollows of this skullAnd offered a world for its contents;That infuriates the powerless thought.
(2 Aug. 1972)
41. Truth like the Sea
Truth like the seaIs too much for our comfort. WeMake our breast strokes,Sail our white yachts,Build on its fleshy beachesAnd love to look on its moonlit faceTo adore.
Drops or waves,As they tickle or cleanseOr make paths for our venturous motion,We take and shout our awesome history:Truth alone triumphs,Alone,Upon the bannersWe stick aloft on our possessions,Our gains our advertisements.
When the salt burns the palate,The pain that is ever part of truthGives us our cynicism,Our vagrant wordy philosophies.
Our loves have always wed beautyWhich is pleasure:
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Pain we must turn into pleasure, too,To be martyrs or saints.
Wonder is, the selfsame thingsThat hold life in this universeAre even those that turn from lifeTo seek a living that is dying;Or we have too much within usSo full – so full of ourselves –We can hardly take anything—The only thing that matters.
(2 Aug, 1972)
42. Not for UsLike wit, a word occurring an hourLater,Wisdom comes to us a yearAfter.
Ours this knowledge so leavened for sweetnessWith ignorance,This right by night that was wrongBy day,This good in passion that was badIn doing,This rose on the stalk that was thornIn the holding,Oh God!This dying in quest of life,This thinking for the ultimate thoughtlessness,This is thought,This pain for the ultimate painlessness
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That is bliss,This search for the final searchlessnessThat is finding.This filling for the final vacancyThat is plenitude.This dreaming for a dreamThat is awakening,O God!For the next experiment yet uncharted;Not for us, not for us, not for us,For we are not worthy;It is not for us, not for us.
(3 Aug, 1972)
43. The Urgent Need
Not heaven of the cloudless graceNor that tiny warm placeIn the memory of tomorrow:They are not urgent.
Give me the language to buy the ticketBefore the train leaves; the special phraseWhich gets the unadulterated milk,The right quantity of sugarWithout the queue and the black rate,Rice not enriched with the un-nourishing pebble,Coffee or tea that is coffee or tea,The pen that writes, the car that moves,The road that reaches the terminal:Words which bring me all theseWithout the special fee.
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Give me the language, please,That ensures the one full seat of my payWith enough room for my human legsTo stretch; the special wordThat shields my cramped soulFrom the neighbour’s howling radio,The unidiomatic shoutAnd the discourteous tone.
The inevitable sorrow of life and deathHave no fears for me.I have enough skill for those.
Give me the skill to spare my noseFrom my dear fellow creature’s bad breath,My sensitive brotherhoodFrom my brother’s Napoleonic toe;The skill with which to walk un-jostled,Skin un-torn by the crowd,And mind un-muddled.
Give me then that skillThat ensuresThe complete payment of my billUn-nibbled by the brokering rat,My goodnessFrom being falsely sneered at,Taken for the buyer’s ignoranceMeant by all the earthy waysTo enhanceThe efficacy of the market place;The special skill that can save my eye,My ears and my mouthFrom all the multimorphous pain
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We so munificently produceFor the living creatures of the world.
Give me the will and the powerFor this earth;For that heavenI have enough in one sleepy gestureOf my soul.
(23 Sept. 1972)
44. A Threnody Unmelodious
He died the man who could notLive more so died the man whom I knewUnlike many others I did notDo not knowTo sing Te DeumOr fill my throat or eyes or thoughtWith rheumOr look in to measure the lengthShortening between my alivenessAnd that inescapable messRendering the electric tuneInto the annoying silence of a stoppageNever yet knowably resumedOr requiemWhere resteth the exhausted labourHome from the hill or the seaOne way awhile or else ad infinitumWhile all the tears hereThe condolatory lispings thereThe academic inferrings betweenTurn themselves into devout oblation
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For the awesome Juggernaut to roll uponThe silence silencingThe majestic argumentBentOn solving the toughest testWith a monosyllabic reply.
Our memories do not failBeing our being’s principleOr the saddening frightening massOf used-up material not a lossFor painBut a gainInto the productive recyclingSuch as the autumnal heapDescending againFor springYet the same songUttered transliterated into a various tongueDetailing the monotonous epilogueThe vogueOf all thought in all climeOr mode of reasoningConvertingPrivate fear into a public hymnOr spasm into metaphysicsWhose meaning hides behind the speaking.
The lower dumbness is betterProviding the an-aesthetic numbnessOf the rock or the ass were thereAnd not this keennessOf a servant’s grief for a master’s recklessness.These child’s wasteful tears
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Insulting a parent’s wealth.
The wealth balancing statisticallyThe ruin of one sinking with the floatingContinues awayMaintainingAn endless profit annuallyThis loss ever made the other gainThe balance sheet always in shineCharged with the audit sign.
We among these factory planksMust fill the belly’s gnawing blanksWith patriotic vapoursPress-ganged into an essential serviceInn the interest of the commonwealthWhere our share is a grantFor a posthumous awardWhen not lost in transit or record.
Nor the carelessness that shrugsNor the recklessness that jeersNor even that indifferent transcendenceNor even all the words of soundMaking the hour’s elegiac melodyThe voiceless silence of the rockThe dumbness of the assSenselessnessIs the only virtueThat saves.
Not even the Buddha’s four mustards.
P.S.: But why must the cosmic flow onward
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To the angelic crystalYield and dry to the cholesterolDog curled up in the middle of the roadSubserving one devious moment’s irrelevanceThat mocks the Attic griefThe Hamletian painKeats’s groanThe Wreck of DeutschlandAll into a farce?
(10 Oct. 1972)
45. Lines by the Roadside of anArduous Journey
Those cozy intimationsOf immortalityGathered from recollections of childhoodOr the tingling muscles of youth,Stoked up philosophically,Have lost their glow.Sights and sounds and sensationsOf the enveloping shadowAre too strong and many.The can of tinTied unto the dog’s tail has a dinThat suffocates an angel’s breath.The wooden stick alone is the prop;The rest is all a phoney clap-trap. Are we the phoenix that can burnIts death out to rise in return?Funny.
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The night mocks the dayWhose points for all their inerasable stayBut extend the endless periodOf eternal vacancyCradling tiny fillings – an oracle in obscurityBecoming fit for a laugh.Even our mortal intelligence might do betterIn at least some things that matter;A schoolboy could add a handful of changesTo the careless line of a mighty master,Improving it.For what is the wisdomThat must carry its own pegsTo hang upon, unusable else?Currencies of foreign kingdomHere unfit?Into the divisions that tear the logicOf talking from feeling, of the mindFrom the heart, of the head from the legs,What religion can pour the conjoining cement?What metaphysics sew the torn tent?We are sick.The all we know feeds not our hunger,Nor what we eat the thirsting spirit.Nor all we do can put this jig-saw togetherThough recollection of the pieces boundIs thereBefore the box was opened.
To much this loyal love can resignItself; Oh! Not that indifferent royal signPatting lifelong service with a moment’s sad wordGracefully uttered:Thanks; good of us; but what a pity;
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All this was unnecessary;A wrong problem in mistake setThe poor boy trustingly lost a whole day upon;A misdirected labour for no recognized profit;An offering unsuited for the altered plan.
(12 Oct. 1972)
46. The Turn of the Card
Upon the turn of the cardExtravagant fancies of a stupid soul depended:A candle light dinner especially plannedWith flowers and a couple of select songsAsked of the obliging bandAnd other insidious persuasions that gently bendThe most uninterested virtueTo the casual fun of a night’s adventure.The failureWould have meant very little too.The hand would return to the same pewTomorrowTo redress the present sorrowWithout even altering the immediate plan.But the card turns up the expected wayAs it has done day after dayFor the lucky man.
Upon the turn of the cardThe roughhewn life of an intelligent man depended:The mending of a weak moment’s error,The joy of a return home of the prodigal son,The ease of a long terror,
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An erring husband’s family reunion,Restoration of a crumbling trust,Courage for a greater venture,The failureWould mean much; for all time bustThe stakerWould not return to the hall againTo redress the un-relievable pain.And the end turns up the unexpected wayAs it has done day after dayFor the unlucky man.
The moonlight enveloped both of themJust as they left the club at ten,One jauntily crossing the crowded street,The other on the sidewalk dragging the feet.
(10 Nov. 1972)
47. Two Halves
The two halves that make the oneFull round wheel for motionTake an awesome toil in joint.They say that parallel linesDo somewhere manage to meet.That much space is beyond the sphereHere.The argument of eternal timeHardly answers the hourly question.We must ride two horses all the timeOr we move not; nor ever build
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Unless we build two,One for everAnd one for now;Wear the sack and starve the night,Playing the dandy all the day,WeddedTo a double bedLike Krishna’s husbandhood,We can love neither both nor either,Unlike Krishna’s godhood.We borrowFrom one half to fill the otherAnd make a double woe,The present joy lending awayTo the past sorrowUpon the pledges of the coming day.
(10 Nov.1972)
48. Protest
Draw these lines of the palm for the part,These the disposition and words typed by Nature’sart;Give these instincts that must like childrenBe loved, protected, given educationWith careful duty;Conjoin to them these memories of earth and sky,Communal property.Establishing the manifold tieWith practice, customs, institution,The wheels upon the rail;Add physics, chemistry and geographyThat settle the colour of the skin,
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The size of the limbs, the height,The bulk and the weight.That generally shape the grinOr smile on the neighbour’s face,The lucky strike or the dismissal;Underline themWith the un-testamented legaciesOf parental whimThat invisibly mould the double helix;Deposit the skeletons visitors have leftIn the niches of our cramped hall,Cupboarded artistically;Amidst the stifling corridors.Pen the dogs and cats and birdsThat followed us from schools and libraries,Mementoes of passing shows,Blocking eternity.
Into this frame, this scaffolding fixA little spiritAnd call it life.We shall, like the Hindu wife,Abide by the elder choice, accept and love it.This mud cup, this vegetable liquidShall sustain the lightTo carry out that cosmic programmeOf making beauty, truth and goodFor immense spaces, countless planets,Inch by inch, grain by grain,And say:Ours is not to question why,Ours is but to do and die.
(12 Nov. 1972)
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49. Paradoxes
The fruit on the tree in the fruitWith the seed with the tree with the fruit.The circle in the square in the circle.The sweet in the bitter in the sweet.Death in the living in the deathOf the being in the un-beingOf the becoming.Rest in the motion of the rest of unrest.The joy of the pain of joy.The plenitude of the emptiness of the plenty.Wealth in the penury of wealth.Words of the silence of speech.O the light of darkness,Darkness of radiance!
Let us keep revolvingThat we may stand.(The blestAre those that are accurst.)Let us goThat we may stay.
(14 Nov 1972)
50. The Melancholy Monarch
Seven times inside the Chinese wallThe skin, the flesh, the nerves, the veins,The bone, the blood, the consciousness,Palaced, surrounded, tall,I sit,
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The eye, the ear, the nose, the tongue, the finger,Each at his bastionSentinel.Around the hill stretches the fort,Solid, strong, forbiddingIntrusion.Through the narrow gatewaysThe commerce authorized proceeds,Scanned and certified each van sentTo its apportioned apartment.I sit, The melancholy monarchEncaved in my own royalty,Un-approached, unapproachable,The iron halo burning all touch.The hollow chamber resoundsWith unheard silences and unseen presences.
(15 Nov. 1972)
(18 Nov. 1972)
51. Theme of Sorrow
Elegies in this landAre not to be written in the churchyard,Country or town, upon the dead loweredInto the earth. Theirs is not the theme of sorrow.The undoing that death does to themIs almost a making, a thing to beDevoutly desired and gladly thanked forMuch for that little relief.
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The doleful bird has its troughAmidst these sounds and motionsOf cities and towns and countryside.Among houses, roads and office roomsAbove the earth,Here is death,That emptiness, inanity, un-being.Words without meaning,Action without intent,Motion without grace;Living is enemy to life, the eerie lampsBy which limbs stir turning the bustle of energyInto a witches’ dance around the broomstick.The soul is a burnt piece of mutton, corrodedBy all the fires of corrupt concepts,Twisted ideals, degenerate thought and feeling.But with dressingThe coffins sparkle in the jabbering parade,Mocking death’s dignity in masquerade.
(22 Nov. 1972)
52. Bitterness
Nor wages of sin,If rewards for virtue weren’tNor the crumpled shirt of the working day,Nor the twilight neon smiling down the balcony,LivingIs each pig in its place in the sty,Countable head for morning noon and eveningMusterGold of the Achillesian hour
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Or the Miltonic planAn impoverished land may banTo strengthen its administrative coffer,The powerOf those vast intelligencesIs master un-doubtable. But the copperJingling of these childish fanciesFor soothing away the spectersFrom the un-travelled landsAnd un-built empires,One should pick from roadside stands!
What would Faust? Or Alexander?Nor God nor Satan is monarch here.
These jeweled arts shall hourly be barteredFor the morning meal and the nightly shelterWith the penny clutching street urchins,Salaamed and smiled and bowed into,Coaxed and welcomed and waited upon,Ulysses standing at his own door, cladBeggarly, and the guffaw of a drunken sotWiping away all the island and all the seaFloating in bitter memory.
(23 Nov. 1972)
53. Valour
To die that once, honoured Shakespeare,Surely shouldn’t need so much valour!The insensitivity of age of the frenzied nerveWill dull the horror,
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Here we die in the soul every minute,Though, refusing to yield yet,We revive our imperishable nature,Energizing it for the next blow.Dawn to night and night to morning,Month after month, we have diedTen thousand times. Our headHas ever moved under the unkind word,The inhuman deed, the beastly frown, balancedFor the repeated fall,Though, invisible still,We have stooped to gather the severed limbAnd nurse it back to place,Resuming the stop-less march.The air we breathe, the fare we chew,Even the anodynes for pain or woe,Have destroyed us hourly,And our uninflammable spiritHas burnt to drop the gall and rise from ashes.
The coward dies just once in life.We are the valiants, who keep this strife.
(23 Nov, 1972)
54. Patriotism
Our souls are not dead.Not at all, and we have always said:This is our country, our native land.When away upon the foreign shoresWe remembered our sun, moon and starsAnd felt their superior loveliness.We have dwelt for hours
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On the memory of our flowers,Pined for our homes and dishes and dressAnd all our easy manners.Missing our parents, wives and childrenWe have written pathetic letters so often.And on returning from the far off strand,Though we did not kneel to kiss,In spirit at least we bent to smellAnd touch and hear our darling earth(From which our very atoms took their birth);So washing our soul of the stain of travel,Returned pure to our native ness.
No. Our souls are not dead.Breathes there a man with a mind so wickedWho could ever say that we haven’t said:This is our country, our native land,Just because for a year or twoOur feet have scraped the foreign land?We shall tear our skin and show the veinsTingling with the blood of patriotic hue.Thrilled by the wave of our country’s bannerWe piously unfurl it on festive daysAnd promptly struggle up to our feetWhen the national anthem falls on our ear.We do much else that is meet.Sing the praise of our ancient past,Make proper fun of the foreigner’s ways,Ring our bellsAt all our temples,Keep all the decreed holidays,Pay our taxes, direct and indirect,Cut at the source or lopped at the mast,Vote our masters into the power arcades,
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And take up labour with due respectTo clear the streets for their cavalcades.
Nothing doing. Our souls are not dead.We have always, always said:This is our country, our native land.(Here our first stumble, here the final stand.)We love its sun, moon and stars,Its earth and sky, its woods and flowers,Its hills and valleys, mountains and sea(As much of them, that is, as we seeOn our way from work to home,The weekend trip or the long vacationBeing unaffordable luxury.)We love all these with all our heartAnd shall canonize them in works of art.
But when it comes to the pens we use,The cars we drive and the shaving blades,And the hundred other worldly goodsSo essential to our body needs,Merciful God and Walter Scott!(If you will judge us on a second thought)Allow us this little frailty(For we are human beings)Of asking for things that are thingsOf the right measure and the right quality,Made in England, France or Germany,Japan, Italy or even the far USA.
(28 Nov. 1972)
55. Clock
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Clock is a valiant faith,Candle in the dark winds,Lost child’s footprints in the woods,Figure of speech, shaping air bubbles out of sand.Boy gathering massive cloud’s evanescent portionsinto palmPillar of rain,Rainbow,Fragrance floating,Wave pebble-stirred,Mule laden with bags of salt, crossing the streamOfTime,Quagmire seething,Perpetual motioning, whirl,Globe-wise, crisscross, multidirectional,Sun in eternal combustion, Hours tumultuous,Flames darting out only to return and dart,Sucking, sucking,A step out actuallyA step in,A step up reallyA step down,Deep, deep into the bog,Invisible envelope;We rise only to fall,We climb only to sinkLike swimmers on the crest of a waveRiding down to the sea.
(28 Nov. 1972)
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56. Regret
The sun was our first love. (We had not readOur Shakespeare to know how he bredMaggots in dead dogs.) To the winking starsWe bared our virgin bosoms.The persuasive tongue of the moonCanvassed our timid buds to wing. The sky’sRadiance seduced our adolescent forward soulsImpregnating our vital stops with joy,Now turned a shameLike Kunti’s dream.For in the transcendent raptureOf that one logic-less hour,As we stood at the window,Mind overflowing the eye, and the bodiless birdTenderly whisperedOf the beams that paved the roadAlong the arch of the rainbowTo the charming distant city,Enchanted, we thought we found our destiny.And gave our preserved soulsTo flowers, to clouds, to meandering brooks,To beauty that shimmers on the hillside woodsWhen lips of light kiss the green,Turning the land to blue.We plighted our troth, our loves sanctifiedBy our love, kept our tryst by moonlightThough hall did not bar the way,Covenanted our bed to the pleasures of spirit,The ethereal riches of mind,
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Sunk among the seven seas of all thought and art,Shipwrecked on journeys of history.And then, since then, we turned our eyes,Our reason and passion, and all our hungers,From the pleasures of the earth.Since then we have livedLike the love bird,Slaking our thirst on drops from the sky.Our abodes are palaces in the air.Palaces of the air;Our accumulated wealth of years,Grabbed, scrimped and deposited fixedly,Are coins of sound and notes of fancy,Silver and gold of imagination,Minted by kings of an unacknowledged empire,Poets, painters, dreamers, philosophers.Not negotiable legal tender,Not convertible into goods of shopFor hunger or warmth or passing laugh,Our wealth now starves us, ensconcedOn our dwindling strength; our shouldersBowed down by the cunning old manTo be carried endlessly onTo be returned to be carried on,We can neither sit nor stretch to rest,Treading among the roadside ditchesFor sheer shame,While processions march along the highwaysOf our gay peers with jingling pocketsOf tradable coppers:A house in the town,A house in the country,One for living and one for rent,Plenty of power of bank account,
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Rank and respect in reportage,All the things of economics,That commonsense is supposed to seek.
Shrunk, we stand on the wrong sideOf the fence and bemoan:We wish we had served our earthWith half the zeal with which we served our heaven.
(29 Nov. 1972)
57. The Poetic ThemeI am a great poet,Preferably from the land of this tongue,So you shall assume,Dear virtuous Hindu reader,At any rate for the purposes of this song,Or else you may find it bitterTo accept these lines without a frownOr a suddenly rising spleenFrothing in righteous indignation,Because, frankly, their theme isThe loneliness and desirabilityOf a young woman’s body(Which, if you’re equally frank with meIs one of the properest themes of poetry.)On which you read shudder lessMany a bard of the English land(Where truths of life aren’t contraband.)Shakespeare, Donne or Lord Byron,Or elsewhere, Frost or Walt Whitman,Erecting thoughts of aesthetic joy
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Both for your private benefitAnd for academic profit.Else you’d cut me mercilessFor this act of sacrilege,If I were to say like Yeats(Who gave to all his earth-matesThe delight of a well-turned thoughtWith which all experience is brought):I can’t my soul’s attention fixOn god or man, tax or bill,Or grammar or manner or decency,Or past or future or heaven or hell,Or work or rest or responsibilityOr economics or philosophy or politicsWhen there is a girl anywhere around,Live or in fancy or reminiscence,With all those joys that in her aboundFor eye, ear, nose, tongue and the tactile sense,And then the final transcendent flowerHidden among her curved beauties,Whose magic has the occult powerTo offer the bliss of eternitiesIn the passage of a few minutes.
(30 Nov. 1972)
58. Longings
I too long to get up and goTo the lake isle of Innisfree,Or what is seen even lovelier to me,To where the Mediterranean seaSoaps her body from top to towWith the white suds of morning light,
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Or where at night all the nightUpon the waves of the broad Arie.Fishermen float their silver songsTo woe the moon as she walksNegligee-d in cloud of beauty.There is a world somewhere awayWhere earth is fragrant and life is gay.Yes, I would surely get up and goEither to the lake isle of InnisfreeOr to the Mediterranean seaOr to the banks of the broad Erie.If I were only freeTo get up and go.
(10 Nov. 1972)
59. To My Son
Blessed are those British singersWhose mortal darknessesThy little light, Child! Could wash away,Who could not but be gay,Caressing with their loving fingersThy tiny, tiny cressesWhile their spirit filled with peaceSoothing the poetic sensibilities.
I should think that in EnglandChildren do not have to be fedWith milk adulterated,With water from the wayside ditch,Nor are their minds in books or schoolsFilled with trash to turn muddy pools
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Reflecting neither earth nor sky,Nor their cold or passing feverHas to be treated with mildewed floorRolled into a pill,Or coloured aquaBottled up with a fraudulent bill.Thy trustful smile burns a holeHere, in my soul.
(28 Nov. 1972)
60. The Onion
The onion is the best imageFor the basic truths of existence.You have all the tears in the exerciseOf all the forms and all the waysYou move on earthAnd work on time,Build or gather.Gain or conquer,And stain the pane with your steamy breathOf fingers of grime.And for the hungers and thirsts of your soulYou hold it in your hand and peelLayer by layer,Sphere by sphereTelescope or microscopeOr the abstract horoscope,Till you reach its ultimate centreOnly to discover the nothing there.
Then there is in it its secret joy,It has a thing of mystery
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In its body chemistryWhich promotes life’s vital flow,Steering your blood pressureAlong the banks of right measure,Dissolving all the cholesterolTo keep the motion on the onward roll.
(28 Nov 1972)
61. Achilles in a Modern PoemThat Miltonic faith that would serveWaiting to serve, is no longer mine.For too many have beenNights of waking to scan the paceOf stars,Slaking the gnawing uncertaintiesWith beers,Soothing nerves with tobacco smokeTo replenish the vital liquidsAnd gases for the breath.I am tiredThe call may fall at last on deaf ears,SilencedBy the final exhaustion.By the timeThe epic making feat over in the distant clime,The adored feet return to fill the winklesEyes of the pining votary, the young handsome soulMay have become a wrinkled hag. Or the decksIn flame consume a recklessDevotion.I can’t assemble a pious surrender
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To a will that would renderA grace beyond death eulogistically inscribed onThe blind tomb, shuffling the dust universesAbove the shivering corpses.I am a tired old manIn spirit already, the fires in the limbs oneBy one lifted from the seething blood,Washed in hourly bitternesses,Chilled and put back like children chid.I have no pityNor for these, nor for the ghosts that lieSick and groaning along the corridorsOf my crowded memory.Those ancient lights by which I turnedThe purchases of all this earth,Carefully converting into goldTo hoardFor the year end trip,I have gathered up in one single holdAnd thrown overboardTo ease a sinking ship.I have no strength for so much weight,Nor need.For the ten by six of my living spaceA little oil lamp has enough light.After all I keep the windows rigidly shut,Lest the urchins from the bygone daysPeep, wave my own shattered flags around,And hurl my splintered dreams in my face.I am tired.I don’t even ask for that one lastRedeeming act.The pillars may stand,The idols have their daily flesh,
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The markets throng with their philistine trade,What care I?My own divinity, shaped by the river and the sky,Caterpillars of the dust and the nibbling ratsHave rough-hewn.My present logic in plain.I am this and I have this much,And in whatever placeI am given to fill,My labour of five or eight hours a dayIs there, my duty round the mill.Take it;The rest is mine. For that my monthly paySufficient must be, fitFor the grub I have to eat,The clothes to wear, the shelter for the nightAnd all they call basic needs,And let them be genuine, not counterfeit,If you please,O lords of the land, makers of our destiny,A little pleasure to oil the railsOn which to move, sweetening the endless trailsBeaten monotonously, call them not luxuriesAnd tax them beyond reach,I shall be content,Nor have any quarrel with what is at last to be,I shall yield to Agamemnon all the honourThat is Agamemnon’s by right of royal power;I shall render unto Caesar’s what is due to Caesars,And the worship that is for the gods shall be theirs.For me this little tent,With this little furnish-ment,Shall be enough.
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(7 Dec. 1972)
62. The Man Who Was AfraidI can’t give my soul the joyOf even the fleeting moment – the tasty dish,The laugh of a joke, the thrill of a lonely drive.Around the corner the insistent shadowWolfishly lurks, tearing the petals from the rose,Filling the bread with worms. It’s no fairy it isThat wooed this elfin spirit, sucked the blood outAnd dropped back the listless shape into the sickbed.Nor is it the wrath of rejected vengeful god,The already granted boon irreversible,Qualifying it with a curse, to transformAn oracular wisdom gifted with a power to fillTen thousand eyes with prophetic tears,Into brainsick raptures, theme for a pitiful nod,None of these, nor that rainbow from the skyVouchsafed to a muddy earth, coaxing the very wormsTo turn into the rain.It’s fear; stark naked fear;Not of death that kills, nor of the punishing hell,Nor of a heaven cheated.This earth is our mind’s bugbear,Fear of the thorny fence of our neighbourBleeding our feet. This is a land of un-fixities.Not on the open sky, nor the steady starlight,The fixed plan of God,
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But so much depends here on so littleRaised by the will of man.It’s not the radiance of virtue, the unquestionedRight of worth, the claims of competenceAnd work that buy you your unimpeded entryTo office or the traveling bus or theatreOf fun. An element of luck, so muchThe ungodly, shapes portions of historyHere. Arre! Often you need a middleman,A special word of recommendation,To buy your package of cigarettes.Next minute’s uncertainty tolls the bellAll the time. I haven’t the bovine peace to dwellIn the present warmth. This too much imagination,The bane of the spirit, deducts the taxAt the source, and fills the sleepy nightWith the nightmare of the next morning.For in the coming minute anything may happen.The rail on which the trains moveAre not subjects of Nature’s empire and lawsAlone of duration and decay.Human neglect or human mischief have their swayOn them too. The griefs and losses invading our homeAre not the slips of the earth, they grow around usIn the manufactories of our neighbour’s greed,Folly or private fancy. And they, our neighboursAre many, and in power, with each one his lawTo impose, each one his priestly edictTranscribed and shouted in multifarious tongue.The bus driver to the hotel keeper,Clerk, labourer, officer,Each is master of the landStretching around.For each his bow, his fee,
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The show of fealty.Every step our feet treadThere is an office of dead.The flow of the river halts for the salaam,The turnpike opens upon the due deposit.The bad grammar of a police constableCan stay the march of stars for a night at leastFor like the mule he bears the palanquin.
I dare not roll the tasty dish around the mouthThe chemical in the butter may burn the tongue.The laugh dies in the throat,Mindful of the impending tear,And the long, long lonely drive may not startFor the car may break down on the way,And the way is a geometrical nightmare.
8 Dec. 1972.
63. No Gay Songs TheseNo gay songs are these.Not that the soul, like the sick cat,Hath not loved its ease. The strength to smile and cast the bowOn green leaves and golden budsAnd on all the forms that glowIn the sunLight, is not dead.In the subterranean bedIncreasing unseenThe liquid stores are in flow.But the cherry face of the earthWe are wedded to kiss
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Has a very foul breathTwisting our restless lipsGreen with pain,Turning our rosy bloodBack, back into the black night.
Yet only a while,It will always return homeWe shall build a devotion whose wealthno indifference can steal,Nor ever age can squander.We shall build a patient faithThat never break in the hourly reproofsOf inconvertible disgustSetting dustAnd desecrating idols shipped for profit.
The lightIn this self-sealed still silencePendulously shivering,Resting at one end on the readinessAnd at the other on the rest,Shall yet rise to shake its dropsAnd burn its shells.
And then these limbs shall bendNot for the swinish cud,Nor for the bovine mud,But in that faithful exerciseIn which, renewed in the cheer of day,Mornings boundTo feed the hungers of spaceAround the trusting earth.
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Some dayWe shall smile.
(12 Dec. 1972)
64. Too much in the Sun
What did you do there with those passionsWordsworth, that could only be whisperedIn love’s ear?Our brilliant sun herePours vegetarian drugs into our pores.Day and night are filled with dog yelpsFor the brief hourly boneOr the shooing stoneOr the over-running wheels.Ponds and woods and hills and dalesAre a foreign country.The judgement of fools, decreesOf powered caprice,Fashion our hours. It’s not the districtOf lakes our geography,The land of sandThree-dimensionally spreadUnder the feet, along the heartAnd over the head,Oft blown into the fourth too,The soul.Nor are there the hours of poetry,Palmed oases,Pining for the moment of gloryThat in love or applause turns our dustInto a blazing star, earth pausingFor a standing ovation.
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Our heroismsAre managing a ticket for the crowded trainAnd struggling to a huddled space,To reach a rented hotel bedThat isOur peacock throne,Our Alexandrian empire,Our winter Alps,Our holiday in the Caribbean summer,Our yacht sailing in the moonlit bays,We have bent our frameTo the riding winds,And taken the configurationRugged crags have offered us,Seasons roll on us, heat wave beats,And the irresistible osmosisFixes us into the putrid soil,Embedding us for a place in the sun,Our only birthright.
(13 Dec. 1972)
65. For Us Moths
Truth is a mode of minding,Chunks captured into the moment’s chew,The immediate portion of your lady’s frame,Lips or lobes or cheeks or hair,Or whatever you please,Nearest to the urgent graspImpatient of the total audit;Or at best like the embryoYet immature in Draupadi’s womb,
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We gather the half truth, partOf a story meant for us.For if the Lord, Krishna we called him here,Would, would tell us the story full.He hides the later actsProper for the proper phaseAnd the proper age.That is his game.And peeping into the mazeIn the pride of the little so littleStretched into the much so much,We snuggle into the showVery much beneath the board:For Adults Only.That is his trick: the advertisementAnd all that luring neon lightFor us moths.
(14 Dec 1972)
66. The Tropical Jungle
A red sun and a bronze skyMould our shape.Flowers in us burn and droop.Bent, we retire into the dark silent cellAnd have no wakefulness for the moon.Winter sports on the vital snows,Invitations to joy,Those have passed the other way.
Nothing stirs the hidden birds.An amazing fire
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Pours herbal peaceTo all sorrowings.None, not one of those thingsThat water the soulFor thought or dream.Neither motion,Nor emotion.One infinite midday drowsinessFrom outsideAnd from insideHugs the tropical wilderness,Life slumbersUnder an aboriginal spell.
(14 Dec. 1972)
67. GriefDangling the timid toes,Four and a half inches of boyish skin,To absorb the soothing coolOf a backwater puddle,We sit sheltered on the firm rooted rockFringing the seaThat spreads along measureless spacesAbove and around.Its aesthetic figures in perpetual passionReshaping the component atomsAnd colours.
Miles of our breadth and heightStay ever parched, ever dry.The dogs frisking in the shade,
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Cats gamboling with the silhouettes,The flat two-dimensional leavesTwirling on their own slender hold,Have enough motion,Enough reaching and enough fillFor their tiny, tiny bowls.
In here among these vibrant cellsAre giant hungersThat can eat all earth,That can drink up the skies,That can ravish the lovely moon,Fed with microscopic grainsChicken livers thrive upon,Or bloodless black ants march for milesFor storage in their thin pin holes.
The fixed roof and the firm floorHeld together by these adhesive wallsSplinter the spirit’s vertebraeSqueezed like a bad package.
The first thousand patient yearsAnd past. What bitterness grows,Stifling the huddled oxygen in this bottled spaceStill to be breathedTo continue in a continuanceTen thousand ways more horrid than deathFor being without death!
Waiting for a chancy grace?An idle philanderer’s curious handTo bend, gather, uncork and sniffFor release
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That perplexes twice?
Instruments of the author’s joy, perhaps,Dolls for an infant earth’s growth.Then why a mind and why a soul,And why the blood that feels?The trees can bear better fruits,Rocks can hold and cement the globe,Dogs and cats make enough music,If the end is just to be!
(15 Dec. 1972)
68. The Giant in the House
This too much livingAmidst the burning lights
In the brainHurts the home
These insatiate cellsDevour all
The table,The family starved.
The legs and veins and the muscular fleshHuddle among the dusty nooks
Unseen,Children of a tyrant father,
Plantings under the Banyan tree,All the time,
All the care,Round the clock,
Is a motionAnd a carriage
Up and down the stair.
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No beds stretchAlong the floor,
No sounds spreadAcross to the drooping walls.
Dark and strippedLie the halls,
Hushed the steps,Conserving to serve the giant aboveWho never sleeps or rests.
(21 Dec. 1972)
69. The Poetic Prison
I admit that all this poetryIs of the elegant mindMoving among its corridorsIn an isolation of its own lights,But unless it haves and lovesTo turn satirical, it dareHardly open the door and saunter outInto the slushy dark streets,Or halls of houses of public manners,That inspire so little love,And satire, so vital a dressFor his climate, hardly suitsThe exclusive taste of lyric fancy.
So the power of languageTo liberate to open doors that connect,Shuts up one from within instead,
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And in that closing, imprisons,Locking up all the accesses to life.
(14 March, 1975)
70. Yudhisthira’s Lie
The word that settles the disputeBetween the truth and the lie,Between heaven of God and hell of Satan,Was covered by a strategyWholly Divine --the Lord’s;But the man’s aerial feetFell two feetTo touch and tread the grimy earth.
That was a mere epithetWhose soundThe mighty inscrutable voice of a God’s trumpetErased from a listener’s ear,Yet not from uttering throat.
Strange, strange or stupid,The ways of God,Tearing off the sheets from the answer-bookAnd flunking the pupil for the un-answeringOr changing the figures of the answersAnd punishing him for incorrectness.
Inscrutable are His ways,Or are they such as the actsOf dictatorial government,Or the vagary of a private whim
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Spitefully using organized power?O come! The luckless are poetry,Epic or prose; or other forms of insomnia.Chance rules the world,The lucky make love or money and sleep with it.
(20 March, 1975)
71. Futility
Carrying but so littleOn the boat that Charon rowsAcross the gapBetween the will of GodAnd the skill of human desire,How silly are pangs of conscienceSetting the wares of memory!
How dull, weary and profitlessAll the search for the enduring,While all that stores over the nightIs a minute’s breakfastFor the vermin of the morning!
Wise are the fools who waste notTime or labour or loveOn the correctness of grammar or syntaxAs long as the order shoutsThe bearer into quick serviceAnd reaches the traveler home.
Ophelias go mad and drown,Filling the beds of Hamlets
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With hugs that pontifically debateThe pros and cons of conscience,While the cosmic planTo keep the earth aliveWorks at ease among Claudiuses,And dogs and asses and goatsAnd all the rest of the breed.
(25 August, 1975.)
72. BlasphemyWhat pain,This wastage of effort fitting the only key –Some god that was appointed lord onceHas left.To the lock that does not open;This fatigue of fingers that must shapeThe sandy grains to a figure of art!
Thus the fingers were made,Not for picking pockets,Not for shaping at cards –A destiny beyond the Aristotelian concept:Not even the slow waking upOf ink on paperSoothes the nerves.Wedded to –Nor damned nor redeemed—An earth that knows not to be served!Enough to give myocardial infectionTo a Miltonic spirit,This thrice-accused blasphemy,Living to live to die.
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(15 Sept.1975.)
73. Pensive Lines.
Sorrows of blue sky or rose petal,Sorrows of the little heavenImprisoned in the soul,The intelligent mind can burnFor stars to fill the still vacanciesOf sense caught in the perpetual fluxOf restless consciousness,Extending, distending,Trying to fill the intolerable emptiness,Palms of the eternity’s echoEchoing the length and breadthOf the endless stretch of the sound of GodTo be snatched, worked up,Conjoined in tune for songs to be,Could wait with earth’s own patienceOf millenniums.
What of these grisly horrorsOf the craft of soulless men,The moles and rats and termitesWith their microscopic perseveranceAbuildingA macroscopic heap of ruin?Art and beauty and music and formTurned into practical dirt,Governing a God’s handiworkInto a Satanic anthillTo be haunted by snakes of poison and crawl
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And politics and power lust and graft!
O God, God! How weary and profitlessTo turn Hamlet at this hour,To ponder fondly, muse sadly,Mourn and accept the poisoning touchWhose guile and strategy irresistibly waitAnd waylay!
Is it after all a silly taleMuttered idiotically for a passing evening’sInane sensation?What stays, upholds, what sustainsThe drooping zest, the withering sense,The crumbling decision and faith?Nor values of man nor notions of God,The one dead, the other stillborn!
The goal is senseless silence?The game a vigorous shout –The loudest heard –Noises engineered into a toyBy the skill of a Japanese artifice?
(19 September, 1975.)
74. Our Duty Alone
Our duty aloneOf imitating God –creating, building, forming,
Gives us our rightTo master the earth – may be the whole universe.
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Naught else,Nor our pride, nor power, nor our perpendicularity.
The cardinal sinIs to claim, to stake to assert, to possess,
To learn to giveAs God gives – unseen, unnamed, unacknowledged,
Is to be to beElse is an act that kills and dies in the killing.
(14 Oct. 1976)
75. Of a Question
I want to ask of God:Who rules this land, the divine will,The reason of man or some Satanic evil.For nature makes the grains that nourish,The merchants add the pebble.Fruit and flower yield vitamin and oilTo sustain living bone, flesh and blood,The shop admixes trash and poisonThat either kills or worse, maims.Engineer, doctor, teacher, lawyer,All reduce a simple principleInto an advantageous compoundAt their end an endless profit,At the other a hideous loss.Adulteration is a national industry,The black the colour of all thinking,
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All act and all emotion,Carefully washed white. Living tissuesTurn experimental pigs for schemes.Forgotten is the basic wordAmong the promulgations of government:Whatever rules, the plan of Rousseau,Of Hitler or Marx or Fabian Socialism,Lenin or Stalin or Mao or Gandhi,Living things are emblems of lifeAnd life is an act of fulfillmentOf powers of flesh and mind and spirit,Each sustaining the other like ladderUntil being climbs to becoming,The ideal of complete being;And systems and laws that systems make,Ideas or theses that make the systemsAre but a means to achieve this,Not blind, whimsical playboy gamesFor an evening hero show.
(19 Oct. 1976.)
76. Gods and ApesThere is no grief more grievousThan a sensitive soul.Give me the buffalo chewing cud,The earthen being,Rolling a little earth in the tongueSatiated, or the bone chewing dog,Master of all food.
That is opulence,But nothing is poorer than a rich mind,
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A wealthy soul,Regal taste reduced to frugal table,The poor pittanceThe parsimonious flesh yields.
O to be a beastOr the little grain among seasOf sand, or antOr the un-metaphysical bird,Darlings of the earth!Woe is a god among snoring apes.
(20 Oct. 1976.)
77. On Another DeathYet another threw in the towel,Slid down the ropes,Stretched his tortured limbsAnd laid himself to rest,In disgust,In weariness, all reserves spent,In comic twistOf a language-less tongue stuck outBetween the jaws of silence.
Not time for protest,Nor for the analysisTo determine in photo and empirical debateThe where the how the whyThe training had failedAnd where the knockout punchFound its vulnerable point,The Achilles’ heel
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And choked the breath.
Nor a consolingSecond prize for one moment’s carelessnessWiping outA fifty, sixty or seventy yearPractice,All its old skills strengths and virtuesNow rolled up into the shrunken summaryOf the finale.
Even the postscriptIs not heaven’s long green fields,Not the majestic lover’s enduring embraceThat revivesSir Arthur’s broken limbsAway from the theatre of painFor the ever warm hearth of home,For the table spread wine and songThe bed spread with an hour’s arms.There is no boat on this lakeNor those hands of soul and beauty,Waiting ministers and companionsFor the soft sailInto the twilightKnocking on the Western doorsFor an immortal morning;A mere splash, momentarily seenOr heard if seen or heard.
The gap fills instantly,Smoothing outThe fluttered wavesWith a hasty rehearsed word,
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The right raga for the nonce,The stage efficiently clearsInto the beginningOf the next show of the eternal piece,Washed fresh and cleanDuring the hours the night preparesFor the new sun of another day.
(18 Dec. 1976).78. In Hopkins’s Company
I joined you, Gerald Manley Hopkins,When you thanked God for the pied beautyOf creatures of earth and skyOr of even earth and sky and sea,But yesterday a young police constableAnd his younger five year old sonWere both one after the otherBitten lethally by a deadly snakeAs it crawled among their sleepy limbsRight inside a Government builtCement and concrete and teak door bedroom.Nobody saw the killer creep in,Nobody could understand how the killer could creep inNor why the killer should creep in into the abode ofliving men,Leaving the plentiful holes aroundGod had meant for such as him,Nor again why into that particular houseWhere neither age nor sickness nor despairJustified and invited the fell finale.In fact it was the confident morning teaAnd the familiarity assured beat and school
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To which the father and son had pledgedThe day’s last thought and the night’s rest!So I shall again join with you, Hopkins,And let me stand beside you in aweBefore the angels of the stained glassFiltering the inscrutable rays of GodTo darkly illuminate the sea bottomOn which are stretched the bolts and nuts,The broken sheets and bent pillarsAnd all the twisted limbs of the Deutschland.
(24 Jan, 1977.)
79. A Scene
The dead snake’s underbellyShines in the molten glass
Of the afternoon sun.
The stones big and smallLie dumb around
After the frenzy of work.
The crowds of passionate servicemenHave left for home
No signature behind,
Carrying the event with themBeyond the moment time
For an un-aging epic-
But the flies are comePrompt in comment
And the final verdict,
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And at a distance are antsFor a second opinion
That confirms history.
(6 Feb. 1977.)
80. Physics and MetaphysicsI inhale the burning cigarette,And blow out the uncontainable gases,Making shapes on the floating air.I made themAnd made them exist at least awhile,And in the making themI existed.
Pure physics,The question of relationship,Hardly calling for metaphysical logic!
Ultimately it may beThat God, Thou,If human language is so usable,Dost exist,For all the science and for allThe rational thought,But only that,What for all the needless concern really matters,Thou existest not for usThat is, human beings alone.
(13 March 1977)
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81. The Fish and the Ring
Words the rods of imaginationCatch are fish,Small or big, dull or dainty,At all times a dishFor the urgent hungerOr the idle hour’s refreshment.
Rarely do they hookFish that bears in its bellyThe ring of ShakuntalaThat one may carry to the kingFor a double reward,One for the giver,The other, more enduring,For the receiver.
(7 Sept. 1985)
82. Copper Coins and the GoldUnnegotiableNature! This mould the shop-Keepers of the earth haveNot accepted,So must return to dustTo be recastInto the cheaper copperCoins their calloused fingersCan recognize and take.
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God! The politician’s imageIs so clear,Clearer than Thine own,So worn out, so dust-laden,Un-transactable.
The candle lights are easyRadiance for the gaming table,Enough forThe intoxicated gamesOf amourUpon the warm bedInside the cozy parlour,Away from the hauntsOf the moon.
The moonlight nightsPaths un-trodden,Difficult of tread.
(14 Oct. 1976.)
83. Living in Gulbarga
What fancy is it that declared:Life is a creature of light and joy,This mud-clothed blind batHugging the black wall of ache,Nursing bruises hourly made?
The blue is for planes and yachtsBeyond bounds,Even farther are the gay-clad
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Merry-voiced streetsOf Hyderabad or the broad-pavedNew Delhi.Light-years away are avenuesLined with pleasure or profit of mindDotting European longitudesOr latitudes of the American sphere,Where Alps nods or the Caribbean winks.Among the broken cups and cracked saucersOf the backyard earthHere in Gulbarga,Dark shades have built their Hades,Littering the lanes withRat squealPig screechOr chicken howlOr even the worse yelp of dog.The side-walk cafés of mirth and ease,The art-houses of light and peace,Are in the antipodes,On the other side of the moonBeyond our specific boundaries.
The soul may inherit a heavenThat has neither candle nor flute.Yet that is dessert that comesAfter this meal,This meal that only stuffsA hungering vacancy with anotherVacancy, un-filling, adding naughtTo naught,Totally registering a wealthThe tax on which exceeds the income.
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To live and labour to saveOnly to settle the taxAnd its accumulative compound interestAnd take little homeTo the heartWith its hungers and thirstsAnd the hundred dear touchingYearnings for a stroll abroad,A visit to a restaurant or a picture-houseOr a merry picnic under the shade!
(18 Oct. 1976)
84. The LilliputiansThe Lilliputians have a field day,Dale and hill and widespread field,Their tents are pitched. The deedsAre registered, promulgated, advertisingFor world knowledgeTheir undisputed possessionOf so much land, acre by acre,Boundaries clarified by an accountOf the ocean on the Western coastFlowing around the southern capeTo join the eastern one. Their agentsAre on thundering horsebacksDriving the trespassing watersFrom the shores, their sentinels,Each in his cubicle, musketAnd wand and the forbidding boardKeeping walkers off under threatOf prosecution. Grass and flower
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And fruity tree, cowed and silenced,Withdrew beyond the broadening fenceAnd seek refuge in the sea.Cement and concrete, steel and glass,Rise up from the earth,Reach to the sky in chainsOf marching smoke. From withinThe giant halls push out linesOf manufactured midgets of steel limb,Cement flesh, concrete skin and glass mindTo people the wide open spacesOf an immensely empty universeFrom which life and the joy of life have fled.
(19 Oct. 1976)
85. The Collective Man
The collective man is a foolAnd a tyrant,He rules the world.God’s men are singleAnd alone,The power once theirsHas not survivedThe change of order, onlyThe species surviving. FittestTo survive are ants, cockroaches,Locusts and rodents,Nations, parties and governments.
The lone lights are stifledIn their own sockets, starved
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Or felled like the tall single giantsRising to the skiesThat lightning strikesOr the earth dries up at the roots,Later giving them a placeAmong the starsOr a name among angels,Comprising empty labelsAfter burning the mortal limbs.
(23 Nov. 1976)
86. The Killer SunLucky are those SwissmenAmong the Alps,Mountain or valley,Where the sun if a blessing,(What are the sorrows of snowThat a gift of lambOr the woodman’s labourEases not?)
Here the killer shinesAnd drainsThe soul on the animal heat,CrucifyingChrists of imaginationOn the ridiculous poleOf the flesh,CrucifyingChrists of the bloodOn the ludicrous cloud pillarsOf the spirit.
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Our metaphors, our proverbs,Quoted always out of context,Misunderstood,Misread and misinterpreted,GenerationTo generation,Play harpies around our tables,Turn honey into gallAnd living into death.
The gods our poetry mouldedOut of stone or woodOr metaphysical air,Turns ghostsTo haunt our inadequate houses,Vacant cupboards and empty pantries,Or racketeersFor those daily levies of protection moneyWhose payment keeps us in business.Follies or slips of the womanWho made usIn the reckless fecundityOf her prolific womb,With some scienceAdmit correction;Even the shame that she rearedDogs and apes and snakes and pigsIn the same universal uterus,A little metaphysicsCan redress;The absurd compound of godly spermMixing weeds, thorns, husk,Kernel, meat and tender honey,
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Can still be sifted and sorted outWith a sieve of reasonAnd the breeze of faith.
But the shoes pinch us,Systems human coinage,Practices and manners of falsity,Twisting the protectingSkin and flesh and boneInto monstrous shapeDefyingLaws of God and ManAnd laws of being,Manufactured by giant companiesJoint stocked for profit and gain,Rackets to loot both earth and men.Glorified into evangelical societiesBy the year-end speechesAdvertising service to mankind.
We human beings,Hereditarily mutilated,Natally disfigured,Hideously dressed up by home and school,Blink into the killer sun.Adjust our damaged eyesAnd occupy our appointed postsAnd let the flesh burnIn allegiance to the liege loved monarch,While far away among the Alps,Mountain or valley,The lucky Swiss skiAnd make love to the poetic snowThat blesses the slope and the lakes
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And beings who happen to touch them.(23 Dec. 1976)
87. The Romantic Agony
This meTied to me!Heavy iron weightsPulling down the tight-sewn sackAround me!
This panoramicVista vision mirrorShowing always me to me,Hiding the lovely earth away!
A silken cellFilled with my own soundsReverberating from all around!
This labyrinthEchoing footfallsOnly mine own leading meBack ever to me!
The Indian mythIs of AbhimanyuWho knew only how to get in.
Far beyond the rescue zoneIs wisdomOf the threadThe woman gave
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Or Houdini’sMagic trick.
(23 Dec 1976)
88. So Little Little
Of humankind in this landThere is so littleBeyond fear, jealousy, mistrust and indifference,Beyond rules and laws and party politics,And the so muchThey make of friendship or loveIs a charity marred by pettinessOr self-interest or a localized special act,And again so little
Of Nature in this acreageAllotted to us little menThere is again so littleBeyond the arid sun and the thorny bushBeyond the dusty road, and the stunted tree,And the so muchWe make of lake or hillIs a chance limited by birthOr inconvenience or a clumsy economics,And so again so little.
Of living amidst the plenty of GodIn this overcrowded space,(Are the crowds the real reason?)There is so little too againBeyond the grabbed seat and the prescribed room,
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Beyond compulsory contentment and unfulfillingexistenceAnd the so muchThey make of plans and projectsIs all substance less statisticsReducing the human being intoThe once again so little.
(23 Dec, 1972)
89. Blessed are the StupidIn some moments life can killAs no death or assassin,Even as love can destroyAs hate never can.Vain would then beThe tongue of patience,Faith or endurance.Vain would hope and reason be,The only sensible thing,Senselessness, analgesic chloroform;For once the invisible wound is made.After all the prophylactic luck is spent,No therapy can totally healThe flesh back to the original glow;No heaven can baptize the earthBack to the once fresh Eden.Blessed are the stupid,For they have inherited the earth.
(18 Oct. 1976)
90. Neither Holy nor a Sonnet
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If it were God that battered the heart,Pains and griefs would be works of art,Gifts from a noble adversary.But the aches and sorrows delivered hereAre stones flung by urchin mischief,Judgement of folly, power of caprice,And sleights of private guileBreaking bone and bruising soulIn the dark. The dark isWork of idleness or stupid zealOf ill-paid service or ill-trained office,The nightmare motionTwisting all line and pointInto a ghoulish mix like a faceIn a broken mirror.
(20 Oct. 1976)91. Our SpiritualityWe become spiritualFilling jute bags with starlight,Gagging positive principleWith rainbows of negation,Eating hungers and drinking thirsts,And when the sacs fill with un-negatable urgency,Catch wood or stone or ivory or cloth,Make divine beautiesAnd ejaculate on them.
Glory be to spirit.Light of light transcendental!The stomach, the palate,The despot glands and cells
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Around the pelvic boneAre dark to be consignedTo dark eyes and bulbs shaded out.We grow spiritual,Refusing the comedy of hormonesTickling the sensitive skinOr rousing the un-metaphysical vein.
(24 Dec. 1976)
92. Of Heaven and HellOur trials betray usOr more than us,All that has made us.
Untried,We are smoothAs baby fleshAngel white,Round as the full moon,
Preaching,Feeling, behaving ChristsUntilThorns tear the face,NailBores into screaming tendons.
Straight even as the nailWhen the path is single,Undivided,Unobstructed,
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Without the eitherAnd the or.
The tragedyIs of the choice inevitable,Two halvesOf an eternal hoof.And nothingHolds the heaven upDangling un-garteredBy the sheer gravitational pullOf so convenientHell.
(23 Feb. 1977)
93. A QuestionShall we bring in
The power of that wifeThat held the sun beneath the watersTo keep the occult truth
Of her womanly nakednessCovered from the mortal eyes,Though encased in infant flesh,
Being it inAnd hurl it like Krishna’s wheelAgainst all this vast landscape,
SeascapeSkyscape
Of organized cunning and graftOf men struggling to exist,
Merely exist
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To make their money,Their puny honours,Their pigsty warmth,Their bovine grunts,
Somehow?
(11 Jan. 1977)
94. Of Hate
Oh! How I hateThese stupid men who bearPalanquins of distorted shapesAnd wield the power of gods,These counterfeit engravings,Transplanted on bamboo pulp,Holding our soul in fee,And let the adroitCounterfeits of counterfeitsSeize the gold and laugh!
(14 March. 1977)
95. RegretO God! Life is one big sorrowFor the so many mountain peaksAll the round globe over
I have not climbedNor shall ever climb!
And, God! Life is another big sorrow
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For the so many lovely girlsAll the youthful world over
I have not lovedNor can ever love!
(14 March. 1977)
96. Nothing We can Do.
There is nothing we can doAbout beingAnd being ourselves,And along this spiral staircaseAnd the shifting landingsAnd the endless wardsFrom basement to atticBeingOne nurseTo all the cacophonyOf the ringing cries.
There is nothing we can doAbout the floodThat neither drownsNor lets us float.
There is nothing we can doAbout this beingBedded upon a whore-sheetUpon which the palimpsestOf identical tacticsOf identical limbsPlaying the same identical game
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Has leftStains and odours and wrinkles.No washing and pressingHave completely erased,And havingTo have itAnd to imagineA virginal paradiseIn the hothouse of hell.
(14 March 1977)
97. A Prayer Un-pious
Nor scriptures nor books of lawWorded with the breath of heaven,Give me, give meThe Jaw-Bone of an ass,Or the punitive staff of Moses,Lord!I shall station myself at this passHere and now,For patience gone,And wait for the hordesThat wear masks of virtue and grace,Pose and hide and show and grabPower to batten their animal fleshOn souls and hearts and minds of men.
(19 Nov. 1977)
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98. To the Pair of Eyes UnopenedCan the sea show up all of itself?The puddle can. The clarity thou seekestSo categorically is the virtue of the shallow.Not even a two dimensional leafCan yield all it is at a single glance.The unknowable dimensions of the soul,The soul itself may yet not know,Speech of words that in their tiny saucersMay carry cups of tea, can hardly presentFor a quick easy entertainment.
The sea would speak too. But what sounds,What grammar, what lexicon intelligibilityCan help it utter? It would speak, too.For it has a heart; it has its streams,Where the vital flow of being and feeling,Feeling that is being, pumps hot and quickInto the living limbs of sentient tissues.It has its dreams; its desires; its thirsts.The stirs crave; the pains and pressuresDemand expression naturally.
That is poetry, the poetry of all lifeOf great measure, un-pourable into brick mouldsOf instant song or immediate humFor an easy nod or smile of recognition.And this poetry is poetry of silenceMajestic, unutterably profound, vast,Like the music of the stars unheardYet hearable in the ears of our souls,
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Like the music of the sea in tumultUn-hearable in the tiny eardrums of skull.
I would utter; I would thaw and flow,For thou hast stirred me so longTo seek thy nod, thy smile of recognitionIn an eye that stopped to see and lookIn adolescent wonder if the rusted lid hid a cave,O lonely wayfarer; O thyself benighted child!Wandering lost in the jungle of the earth,Mocking a sleepy giant with a squeaking toy,But stir the sea deep enough or disturb it not,Pass gently on if thou artn’t the pull of the sky.
(26 Sept. 1985)
99. The Spiders
Among the skyscrapersScavenging heaven, vacuum cleaners,The web shuttles multi-dimensionally,Passions roll in the Underground,The metro and the Tube,Crawling serpentine,Along the left bank of the Seine;Overhead rational neonAlphabetically twinkles, endlesslyReorganizing the wares behind the window-panes.
In the beginning was nothing,PurushaBreathed upon the moving waters,
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PrakritiSmiled upon the heavenly sire.Impregnating offspringThe dog was bredThat fedThe womb of its own birth and drewMultiple copies, XeroxingThe counterfeits.
Go and multiply yourselves among the nations.
Creations’s multifarious web weavesIndustriously;The spider sill shoots out filament, filament,filament,Bridging vacancy to vacancy,In the labyrinthThe red king running to stand in place,The dead centre.Abhimanyu did not. Krishna knew,The father found him dead.
But the corridors are fineAnd dark. Avenues of restless ants’ line,Hoarding microscopic meals for thrift,The nightingales, nightly adrift,Singing sirenly,Lead thirsty knights on their mulesTo the counter stools,Leaning on an elbow, hand in poiseFor emphasisOr halitosis,Adroitly balancing the manna glass,Metaphysical speculation uncovers the word,
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Swaddled in darkness. The murky cobweb-Shrouded lamp inclines lightly on the raftInvisibly bright shadows listingIn the tournament of wits,The parliament of fools.The Socratic wisdom fumigates merrilyCurled up in tobacco smoke,The hemlockSteam of alcohol, the L.S.D.,The 007 (O men! When you wear which,Be kind to the ladies, they itch)
What is your pleasure? A pint of bitter.Oh! Here is God’s plenty, mister.Have your pick. Are you free for the evening?Gee! That sounds real interesting!Mary, May hold me tight.
Imitations of ChristThe day is for him, for the other the night.(Smoke Viceroy for the taste that’s right.)For some we have loved for their faces bright,And some for their voices sweet,Even some for their lovely dimples(Concave pimples),And some against for just it.
So the yarn weaves. Weaves so the storied Greeksister.
These weave their angler’s net, fishingPhilosophically, weaveTheir hunter’s web, poachingAphrodisiacally on the roadside, in the kiosk;
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WeaveTheir rat-trap, catchingImperially,Enslaving, shepherding, interviewing, deploying,To eat, to drink, to dress, to read, to hurtFor another’s glee,Blind mouths, dear deers, worm-eating fish, guinea-pigs
MakersOf an empire, all-subjecting, imperishableMore than the everlasting,Naturalizing those not born,The pyramids –crystallized groans of splinteredvertebrae,The Taj Mahals – word-buildings in marbleTrapping the ecstatic tears of idiotic agony;The bridges, the broadways, the city blocks, theskylinesOf shining Babel squabble.Testament of human beauty.
Builders Of temples, imprisoningThe fleshless idea for the entrance fee,Caged bird, ventriloquistically singingFor faked appreciation, a weeklyRitual,A surrealist dream for the Albert Hall,An evening dating stroll through the Mall.
Traders,Delicatessens
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And druggists all night authorized to dispenseCandies for the child,Chesterfields for the adult,Barbiturates for the grown,Vitamin pills for the aged,Retailers with their tithe of license,Agents of the white-throned providence.In the centre they sit around,Spread aroundThe glittering baits,Colour, shape, size, form, fashion, utility, amenity,Exotic novelty.The counter, refinement’s half-round table,Wisdom’s fable,Stretches aroundThe insatiable womb, the fire, the earth.In silent mirthThe ringing register tolls the tax,Mysterious dogmatic miraculous oracular,The box,The cubicle, interview –(inquisition) – chamber,Consulting room, operation theatre,Tabernacle, horoscope, last wordTo be heardObeying,Recording Angel, billing, bulling,Duties, responsibilities, categorical imperatives;You shallOr the court-marshal.
And the edge, the twilight periphery, the penumbraBeckons. The shadow in the lawless doorwaySlides up. Are you looking for fun? Oui.The honey entrances. Scratches the bee.
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The petals of pristine mystery widen greasily,Inviting spreads the enigmatic smile lip to lip.Maharaja Service with a crooked kneeCries Sesame.Opens the green door to fairyland, caveOf Aladdin, the Grail, the Seventh Heaven, shrineOf the blind god of the pied pipe tuneOf the siren song of stars that leads to Him.Philomel shrieks ambiguously. Unveils Salome.The moth is caught. Geneviere’s Italian kerchiefWaves. The black night has won. The catGrins. Jump the antenna pricksIts senses. Stretch their grimyMercantile hands. Itching, the centre stirs,Bewitching.BewitchedUlysses falls, goes into the parlour,As Circe asked the bishop.Goes up the whirling intoxicating Coney trainAnd down into the abysm that comes up again.One up and one downThe dance of heaven’s decoyTrips.Trips Viswamitra and falls. And then and thenWhat a fall there was in that, my fellowmen!
Fell,The first man fellThe next man fell and the next man fell,From grace, power, throne and glory,Wealth and health,Love of god, parent, friend and country,In wit and stealth.
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London Bridge is falling, falling, falling.
FallsThe home-bent husband, enticed, excitedBy the peg of ease by the roadside pub,By the jingle of the numbered cube --One throw a fortune makes –By the queens. Here she is of Spade,Here of the Diamonds, here is the Club,Oh, here is Helen, the queen of my hearts,All arts,Anodynes, sweeteners,Palliatives, consolers.
Overthrown,The pay of a mensual travail, one’s own,The wealth of ages, bequests of others,FillsThe tillsWhose apples promise to fall in lineAt one more trail ahead,One more, one little more, one for the road,Just one for the keeps.The spider’s infinitely knowing handWipesThe relics of the hourly repast. The barmanWipesThe soiled counter fresh for the next tip.The croupiers sweep back the pack like saintsShe paintsFor the next smile again.One more dab of Eau-de-Cologne,Dettolin and pencillin(Glory be to Alexander, conqueror of kings,
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For the pure drug house, for these bottled things.)The lines are smoothed in the faceAnd the sheets,The next show to begin.
By the muddy waters of the Ganga, I weptAnd cried: Is this the lightThat was said to be,The kindly light to lead,The light that shone on land and sea,The light,Transcending bright,That flameless burns,Unlit, unsoiled, wickless,Beyond word, beyond mind,Excellent, pure…
(22 Jan. 1972)
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Matter for the blurb:
The present collection contains ninety eightexcellent poems of T.R. Rajasekharaiah, which may bedescribed as cerebral. It easily invites comparison
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with similar poetry of Nissim Ezekiel, JayantaMahapatra, Shiv K. Kumar and others. One may easilysee the evidence of his wide reading and scholarship,extensive travel all over the Western world, deepthinking and keen observation of human nature andsociety around him and super-sensitivity, articulatedin his poetry.
*****
Basavaraj Naikar (b.1949), M.A., Ph.D., D.Litt(California), Professor and Chairman, Department of English,Karnatak University, Dharwad (India), is a bilingual writer inKannada and English. He has published several reviews andresearch articles in national and international journals. Hereviews Indian literary works for World Literature Today (Oklahoma,USA) regularly. He has translated many works from Kannada intoEnglish and vice versa. His specializations in teaching andresearch include Shakespeare Studies, Indian EnglishLiterature, Indian Literature in English Translation,American, Anglo-Indian, Commonwealth Literature, Translation:Theory and Practice. He is the recipient of GulbargaUniversity Award for translation, Olive Reddick Award fromA.S.R.C. Hyderabad for research, Gemini Academy Award fromPanipat, Vasudeva Bhupalam Award from the Kannada SahityaParishat, Bengaluru and Kuvempu Bhasha Bharati Award fromBengaluru. He is a Fellow of the United Writers of India, NewDelhi.
His The Thief of Nagarahalli and Other Stories was short listedfor the Commonwealth Fiction Prize for the Best First Bookfrom Eurasia in 2000. His second collection of stories, The
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Rebellious Rani of Belavadi and Other Stories and first historical-political novel, The Sun behind the Cloud dealing with the colonialencounter between Bhaskararao Bhave of Naragund Kingdom andthe East India Company, has been published recently. Hissecond novel, Light in the House depicts the life and message ofSharif Saheb of Shishunala, a popular philosopher and apostleof communal harmony between Hindus and Muslims. His thirdnovel, The Queen of Kittur depicts the colonial conflict betweenRani Chennamma of Kittur and the East India Companyauthorities around 1826. His Rayanna, the Patriot and Other Novellasdeals with the lives and struggles of Raja Mallasarja, SaintKanakadasa, Jakkanacharya, the unparalleled Architect andRayanna, the patriot who fought a guerilla war with the EastIndia Company sarkar during Rani Chennamma’s days.
His Kannada publications include Paduvana Nadina Premavira,Huchchuhole, Kollada Neralu, Jogibhavi (staged, broadcast, telecastand prescribed as a text for B.A. Degree), Nigudha Saudha,Govardhanram, Asangata, Kannada Asangata Natakagalu, Samrachanavada,Beowulf, Gilgamesh Mahakavya, Vatsalya, Bharatiya English Sahitya Charitre,Siddhanta Mattu Prayoga, Swatantryada Kanasugara and Kempu KanigiluMattitara Natakagalu, Kitturina Virarani and Androsina Kanye Mattu Phormio.
His English publications include Sarvajna: The Poet Omniscient ofKarnataka, Critical Articles on Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Musings of Sarvajna,Shakespeare’s Last Plays: A Study in Epic Affirmation, The Folk Theatre of NorthKarnataka, Sparrows, Sandalwood, Kanakadasa, Sangya Balya: A Tale of Love andBetrayal, Fall of Kalyana, Indian Response to Shakespeare, Indian English Literature(10 Vols,) Critical Response to Indian English Literature, Perspectives onCommonwealth Literature, Indian Literature in English Translation, Literary Vision, ADreamer of Freedom, The Holy Water, The Vacanas of Sarvajna, The Frolic Play ofthe Lord, Glimpses of Indian Literature in English Translation, The DramaticImagination and The Multi-Cultural Dramatic Vision.
*****
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