Name: jagannath rao adukuri
visited *loading* times
trying to read stories
in the noontime,when
least rain is expected
there is a hot chimera
on the tarred road
a lone woman with a
metal pot on head
poetry strikes now
in the whir of the head,
a body posture replying.
the sky becomes hot
in the pipal leaves
pictures are now colored
thin and brilliant
like dreams of purple
when nothing happens.
all that happens in
the transience of the hem
in the corners of leaves.
the body posture replies,
the question posed
then the reply ,in the body,
in the way it crouches
and in the colored back.
These people have come here
To solve earthly existence problems
On the river that washed sins,
Human bodies and buffaloes.
They came from a far off river land
Where sins are equally washed.
But that is of course another thing.
They are wearing dark glasses
And their lungis above kneecaps.
They speak an ancient tongue
And eat mounds of liquid rice.
But that is ,again ,another thing.
But when their boat reaches
Within sight of the manikarnika ghat
They are deeply afraid in their eyes
Like you,me and our ancestors.
(Manikarnika ghat is the ghat (river steps) where one meets life and death:it is the cremation ghat on the Ganges in Varanasi .It is believed that the soul will attain liberation if the body is cremated here.)
He interrupted us ,smiling,
In our endless dreams,
In the infinite space beyond
Where the eagles soared.
The earth came alive
Where his feet touched .
Thick conical leaves
Intertwined with his legs
To hide his splendid nakedness
From the sleeping world.
We felt small as if
We had to remain silent
While the earth came alive.
( The statue of Gomateswara , a Jain saint stands tall at Shravanabelagola in Karnataka- the world’s biggest monolithic statue constructed in the 10th century )
Then the drama continued
The words were spoken
From the guttural depths
Of a middleman’s throat
And washed by drops
Of sanctified water
The pursuit of silver
Went on in the waters
With sonorous words
Chasing multitudes of
Life-death shadows
The waters flowed silently
Over the rocks nurturing life
And its golden-brown ashes.
It had happened too quickly
As though it needed to happen
Experience then sat on my brow
I remember the first cataclysm
When it had fortuitously happened
In the green sea of nothingness
When there were no words
There was all-around green fluid
My breathing was slow and rhythmic
My reaching out was tentative
Now again it is spasmodic, yelling
I want to reach out, my palms
Cupped in clumsy supplication
Then I did not ask to be born
As a mere chemical experiment
I do not want now to cease to exist
Merely as another cosmic event
Leaving a trail of flourescent words
Tell me quickly what I shall do
With the luminous astral pieces
I have been garnering all these days.
When one tries to get back to the muse
One is steeped ,like stick in the mud.
One keeps twittering like the night bird
Deeply afraid that the wind comes,
In the sea of night, bird does not see bird
But fallen leaves and broken twigs
And these are no images for nest making.
When we were In the beautiful Sunderbans*
The shadows were long and diaphanous
And , in the monsoon, reached the dark skies.
Outside our huts, the trees were crooked
And leafless, bearing the burden of our sins
And the child’s shrieks at the phantom’s coming.
In the city, the nights are dreamt once again,
In broad daylight, among several theses;
All the while, in the backwoods, a yellowed day
Was witness to cultural history being re-enacted.
Meanwhile, there was fever rising in our blood
Strangers at midnight attacked us for our secrets
A little girl laughed at the dreams in our head,
Outside the room, from the fever of her own blood.
*( literally ,beautiful forests, the estuarine forests of Bengal, the home of the royal Bengal tiger)
Here a talking man is sleeping,
His arms akimbo, feet in the air.
Then were wild gesticulations,
Sweat on brow, fire in the eyes
Now vacant and unconnected.
He will no longer exist in space
But he had happened in time
Whatever begins shall remain.
She shrieked out from the bowels of Time
Fluttering her soulless eyes in fiery anger
A megalomaniac emperor had embalmed her
And embedded her in cold marble vaults
The marbled beauty of a magnificent mausoleum
Smothered her own entity and left her cold
Just like this man’s fabled passion for her
A fourteenth child- birth was not for celebration
She had helped create his entity , lost her own.
Mother Kali’s saucerlike eyes
Went moist with maternal tears
As Kolkata squirmed at bygone glory
The loss of yesteryears’ literature trophy
Has left its gentlemen sons
Bewildered and bereft,entirely.
( referring to the unfortunate incident of the theft of the Nobel literature award of Rabindranath Tagore from Shantinketan)
He went the reverse
In a splurge of light
A regression from entity,
Through amnios to unentity.
A sudden violent breeze
Hit him in the solar plexus
And confused his senses.
There was unfilling of space
Only an infinitesimal form
Close-ended, where he existed.
The city lay crumpled in a quiet corner
The sun slid below an unfinished house
The white ghosts had still time to return.
Pulse-beating hearts, thought-abhorrent,
Beat in the very depths of their rib-cages
In onrush of blood and oxygen-seekings.
Several transformations worked technically
In colored copies of quintessentialities.
A few frames mattered and horizons’ tilts
The artist looked for exactness of science
Capillary details appealed to beauty-logic.
You know how we seek ghosts in quiet time.
Our graphic eye sought the nature of things
In white balances and still phosphorescences.
Beauty eluded while pursuing pixel- perfection.
The body quickly gave way;
The sanitized walls closed in.
The lonely crab struggled
In a puddle of scalding water
There were voices around
All happened in a split-second
When someone shouted
Pull him out, for God’s sake;
This is a mere dream.
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