R. Parthasarathy

River-once

 With paper boats

           boys tickle my ribs

and buffalos have turned me to a pond

there’s eaglewood in my hair

 and stale flowers ,

           every evening

    as bells toll

 in the forehead

 of the temples

 I see a man

     on the steps

 clean his arse

 kingfishers and egrets

 whom I fed

  have flown my paps

 Also emperors and poets

 who slept

 in my arms

 I am become a sewer

      now, no one

 has any use for Vaikai river, once

 of this sweet city. 

Nissim Ezekiel

   Enterprise

 

It started as a pilgrimage

Exalting minds and making all

The burdens light. The second stage

Explored but did not test the call

The sun beat down to match our rage.

 

We stood it very well, I thought

Observed and put down copious notes

On things the peasants sold and bought

The way of serpents and of goats

Three cities where a sage had taught.

 

But when the differences arose

On how to cross a desert patch

We lost a friend whose stylish prose

Was quiet the best of all our batch

A shadow falls on us- and grows.

 

Another phase was reached when we

Were twice attacked, and lost our way

A section claimed its liberty

To leave the group. I tried to pray

Our leader said he smelt the sea.

 

We noticed nothing as we went,

A straggling crowd of little hope,

Ignoring what the thunder meant,

Deprived of common needs like soap,

Some were broken, some nearly bent.

 

When finally, we reached the place

We hardly knew why we were there

The trip had darken every face

Our deeds were neither great nor rare

Home is where we have to gather grace.

 

 


Nissim Ezekiel

A Very Indian Poem in Indian English

 

I am standing for peace and non-violence

Why world is fighting fighting

Why all people of world

Are not following Mahatma Gandhi

I am simply not understanding

Ancient Indian Wisdom is 100% correct

But modern generation is neglecting

Too much going for fashion and foreign thing

  

Other day I’m reading in newspaper

(everyday I’m reading Times of India

to improve my English language)

How one goonda fellow

Throw stone at Indira behn

Must be student unrest fellow, I’m thinking

French Romans country men, I’m saying

(to myself)

Lend me the ears.

 

Everything is coming-

Regeneration, remuneration, contraception

Be patiently, brothers and sisters.

You want one glass lassy?

Very good for digestion

With little salt lovely drink

Better than wine;

Not that I’m ever tasting the wine

I am the total teatotaller, completely total

But I say wine is for the drunkards only.

 

What you think of prospects of world peace?

Pakistan behaving like this,

China behaving like that

It is making me very sad, I’m telling you.

Really most harassing me.

All men are brothers, no?

In India also

Gujarathis, Maharastrians,Hindiwallas

All brothers

Though some are having funny habits.

Still, You tolerate me,

I tolerate you,

One day RamRajya is surely coming.

 

You are going?

But you will visit again

Any time, any day.

I’m not believing in ceremony

Always I’m enjoining your company.

Jayantha Mahapatra

Hunger

It was hard to believe the flesh was heavy on my back.

The fisherman said: Will you have her, carelessly,

trailing his nets and his nerves, as though his words

sanctified the purpose with which he faced himself.

I saw his white bone thrash his eyes.

 

I followed him across the sprawling sands,

my mind thumping in the flesh’s sling.

Hope lay perhaps in burning the house I lived in.

Silence gripped my sleeves; his body clawed at the froth

his old nets had only dragged up from the seas.

 

In the flickering dark his hut opened like a wound.

The wind was I, and the days and nights before.

Palm fronds scratched my skin. Inside the shack

 an oil lamp splayed the hours bunched to those walls.

Over and over the sticky soot crossed the space of my mind.

  

I heard him say: My daughter, she’s just turned fifteen…

Feel her. I’ll be back soon, your bus leaves at nine.

The sky fell on me, and a father’s exhausted wile.

Long and lean, her years were cold as rubber.

She opened her wormy legs wide. I felt the hunger there,

the other one, the fish slithering, turning inside. 

Rabindranath Tagore

THE CHILD

( I )
 
What of the night? they ask.
No answer comes.
For the blind Time gropes in a maze and knows not 
                its path or purpose.
The darkness in the valley stares like the dead 
                eye-sockets of a giant,
        the clouds like a nightmare oppress the sky,
        and the massive shadows lie scattered like the torn 
                limbs of the night.
A lurid glow waxes and wanes on the horizon,  
is it an ultimate threat from an alien star,
        or an elemental hunger licking the sky?
Things are deliriously wild,
they are a noise whose grammar is a groan,
        and words smothered out of shape and sense.
They are the refuse, the rejections, the fruitless failures
                of life,
abrupt ruins of prodigal pride,
fragments of a bridge over the oblivion of a vanished
                stream,
godless shrines that shelter reptiles, 
        marble steps that lead to blankness.
Sudden tumults rise in the sky and wrestle
        and a startled shudder runs along the sleepless
                hours.
Are they from desperate floods 
        hammering against their cave walls,
or from some fanatic storms
        whirling and howling incantations?
Are they the cry of an ancient forest
        flinging up its hoarded fire in a last extravagant 
                suicide,
or screams of a paralytic crowd scourged by lunatics 
                blind and deaf?
Underneath the noisy terror a stealthy hum creeps up 
                like bubbling volcanic mud,
        a mixture of sinister whispers, rumours and 
                slanders, and hisses of derision.
The men gathered there are vague like torn pages 
                of an epic.
Groping in groups or single, their torchlight tattoos 
                their faces in chequered lines, in patterns of 
                frightfulness.
The maniacs suddenly strike their neighbours on
                suspicion
and a hubbub of an indiscriminate fight bursts forth
                echoing from hill to hill.
The women weep and wail,
        they cry that their children are lost in a wilderness 
               of contrary paths with confusion at the end.
Others defiantly ribald shake with raucous laughter 
        their lascivious limbs unshrinkingly loud,
        for they think that nothing matters.
 
 
 
(II)  

There on the crest of the hill
        stands the Man of faith amid the snow-white
                silence,
        He scans the sky for some signal of light,
        and when the clouds thicken and the nightbirds 
                scream as they fly,
        he cries, ‘Brothers, despair not, for Man is great.’
But they never heed him,
        for they believe that the elemental brute is eternal
        and goodness in its depth is darkly cunning in 
                deception.
When beaten and wounded they cry,  ' Brother, where
                art thou?’
        The answer comes, I am by your side.
But they cannot see in the dark
        and they argue that the voice is of their own
                desperate desire,
that men are ever condemned to fight for phantoms
                in an interminable desert of mutual menace.
 
 
 (III)
 

The clouds part, the morning star appears in the East, 
        a breath of relief springs up from the heart of the
                earth,
the murmur of leaves ripples along the forest path,
                and the early bird sings.
’ The time has come,’ proclaims the Man of faith.
The time for what?’
For the pilgrimage.’
They sit and think, they know not the meaning, 
        and yet they seem to understand according to their 
                desires.
The touch of the dawn goes deep into the soil 
        and life shivers along through the root of all
                things.
To the pilgrimage of fulfilment,’ a small voice
                whispers, nobody knows whence.
Taken up by the crowd
        it swells into a mighty meaning.
Men raise their heads and look up,
        women lilt their arms in reverence, 
        children clap their hands and laugh.
The early glow of the sun shines like a golden garland
                on the forehead of the Man of faith,
and they all cry: ‘Brother, we salute thee!’
 
 
 
( IV )
 
Men begin to gather from all quarters,
        from across the seas, the mountains and pathless
                wastes,
They come from the valley of the Nile and the banks
                of the Ganges,
from the snow-sunk uplands of Thibet, 
        from high-walled cities of glittering towers,
        from the dense dark tangle of savage wilderness.
Some walk, some ride on camels, horses and elephants, 
        on chariots with banners vieing with the clouds 
                of dawn,
The priests of all creeds burn incense, chanting verses 
                as they go.
The monarchs march at the head of their armies, lances flashing in the sun and drums beating loud.
Ragged beggars and courtiers pompously decorated, 
        agile young scholars and teachers burdened with
                learned age jostle each other in the crowd.
Women come chatting and laughing,
mothers, maidens and brides,
        with offerings of flowers and fruit,
        sandal paste and scented water.
Mingled with them is the harlot,
        shrill of voice and loud in tint and tinsel.
The gossip is there who secretly poisons the well  
                                                            of human sympathy and chuckles.
The maimed and the cripple join the throng with the 
                blind and the sick,
        the dissolute, the thief and the man who makes a 
                trade of his God for profit and mimics the 
                saint.
’The fulfilment!
        They dare not talk aloud,
but in their minds, they magnify their own greed, 
        and dream of boundless power,
        of unlimited impunity for pilfering and plunder, 
        and eternity of feast for their unclean gluttonous 
                flesh.
 
 
 
( V )
 
The Man of faith moves on along pitiless paths strewn 
                with flints over scorching sands and steep 
                mountainous tracks.
They follow him, the strong and the weak, the aged
                and young,
the rulers of realms, the tillers of the soil.
Some grow weary and footsore, some angry and 
                suspicious.
They ask at every dragging step,
        ’ How much further is the end? 
The Man of faith sings in answer;
they scowl and shake their fists and yet they cannot 
                resist him;
        the pressure of the moving mass and indefinite 
                hope push them forward.
They shorten their sleep and curtail their rest,
        they out-vie each other in their speed,
they are ever afraid lest they may be too late for their 
                chance
        while others be more fortunate.
The days pass,
the ever-receding horizon tempts them with renewed
                lure of the unseen till they are sick.
Their faces harden, their curses grow louder and
                louder.
 
 
 
(VI)
 
It is night.
        The travellers spread their mat on the ground
                under the banyan tree.
A gust of wind blows out the lamp
        and the darkness deepens like a sleep into a swoon.
Someone from the crowd suddenly stands up
        and pointing to the leader with merciless finger
                breaks out:
            ’False prophet, thou hast deceived us!’
Others take up the cry one by one,
        women hiss their hatred and men growl.
At last one bolder than others suddenly deals him a
                blow.
They cannot see his face, but  fall upon  him in  a  fury 
                of destruction
        and hit him till he lies prone upon the ground his 
                life extinct.
The night is still, the sound of the distant waterfall
                comes muffled,
        and a faint breath of jasmine floats in the air
 


 (VII)
 

The pilgrims are afraid.
        The women begin to cry, the men in an agony of
                wretchedness
        shout at them to stop.
Dogs break out barking and are cruelly whipped into
                silence broken by moans.
The night seems endless, and men and women begin to 
                wrangle as to who among them was to blame.
They shriek and shout and as they are ready 
                to unsheathe their knives
        the darkness pales, the morning light overflows
                the mountain tops.
Suddenly they become still and gasp for breath as they  
                gaze at the figure lying dead.
The women sob out loud and men hide their faces in 
                their hands.
A few try to slink away unnoticed,
        but their crime keeps them chained 
                                                                                                                                                      to their victim.
They ask each other in bewilderment,
                        ‘Who will show us the path?’

The old man from the East bends his head and says:
                                            ‘The Victim.
They sit still and silent.
        Again speaks the old man,
        We refused him in doubt, we killed him in anger,
                now we shall accept him in love,
        for in his death, he lives in the life of us all, the
                great Victim.’
And they all stand up and mingle their voices and sing,
                        Victory to the Victim.’
 
  
 
( VIII )
 
‘To the pilgrimage' calls the young,
        ‘to love, to power, to knowledge, to wealth 
                overflowing,’
‘We shall conquer the world and the world beyond
                this,’
they all cry exultant in a thundering cataract of
                voices,
The meaning is not the same to them all, but only the
                impulse,
        the moving confluence of wills that recks not death
                and disaster.
No longer they ask for their way,
        no more doubts are there to burden their minds
                or weariness to clog their feet.
The spirit of the Leader is within them and ever
                beyond them—
the Leader who has crossed death and all limits. 
They travel over the fields where the seeds are sown,
        by the granary where the harvest is gathered,
and across the barren soil where famine dwells
           and skeletons cry for the return of their flesh.
They pass through populous cities humming with
                life,
        through dumb desolation hugging its ruined past, 
        and hovels for the unclad and unclean,
        a mockery of home for the homeless. 
They travel through long hours of the summer day, 
        and as tire light wanes in the evening they ask
                the man who reads the sky:
‘Brother, is yonder the tower of our final  hope
                and peace?’
The wise man shakes his head and says:
        ‘It is the last vanishing cloud of the sunset.
 ‘Friends,’ exhorts the young, ‘do not stop.
        Through the night's blindness we must struggle
                into the Kingdom of living light.’
They go on in the dark.
        The road seems to know its own meaning
        and dust underfoot dumbly speaks of direction. 
The stars—celestial wayfarers—sing in silent chorus:
                                ‘Move on, comrades!’ 
In the air floats the voice of the Leader:
                                 The goal is nigh.’
 
 
( IX )
 
The first flush of dawn glistens on the dew-dripping
                leaves of the forest.
The man who reads the sky cries:
                ’ Friends, we have come!'
They stop and look around.
        On both sides of the road the corn is ripe to the
                horizon,
         the glad golden answer of the earth to the
                morning light.
The current of daily life moves slowly
        between the village near the hill and the one
                by the riverbank.
The potter’s wheel goes round, the woodcutter brings
                fuel to the market,
        the cow-herd takes his cattle to the pasture, 
        and the woman with the pitcher on her head
                walks to the well.
But where is the King’s castle, the mine of gold, 
                the secret book of magic,
        the sage who knows love’s utter wisdom?
‘The stars cannot be wrong, ’assures the reader of the sky. 
‘Their signal points to that spot.’
        And reverently he walks to a wayside spring 
from which wells up a stream of water, a liquid light,
        like the morning melting into a chorus of tears 
                and laughter.
 Near it in a palm grove surrounded by a strange hush
                stands a leaf-thatched hut,
at whose portal sits the poet of the unknown shore, and 
                sings:
                        ‘Mother, open the gate!’

(X) 

 A ray of morning sun strikes aslant at the door.
The assembled crowd feel in their blood the primaeval   
                chant of creation:
                        Mother, open the gate!’ 
The gate opens.
The mother is seated on a straw bed with the babe on
                her lap,
        Like the dawn with the morning star.
The sun’s ray that was waiting at the door outside  
                falls on the head of the child.
The poet strikes his lute and sings out:
       ‘Victory to Man, the new-born, the ever-living.’
They kneel down, —the king and the beggar, the saint
                and the sinner,
        the wise and the fool, —and cry:
    ‘Victory to Man, the new-born, the ever-living.
The old man from the East murmurs to himself:
                        ‘I have seen!’