Poetry rediscovered – 5

Last year I rediscovered haiku, first encountered in my tweens – and the love affair continues… Nothing to beat the old haiku masters Basho, Buson, Issa, Shiki. The imagery never fails to touch a chord deep inside, the unexpected humor raises a chuckle and makes your day, wise insight into the human psyche can stop you dead in your tracks… Truly masterpieces of all time.

I provide a short messaging (SMS) quotation service to about a dozen friends and relatives in Chennai. A quote every morning to start the day, culled from my vast collection… I make it a point to include two haiku a month one at new moon and one at full, choosing appropriately for the season as well.

Here are a few of my favorites:

An old pond
A frog jumps in -
The sound of water.
- Basho

Asleep in the sun
on the temple’s silent bronze
bell, a butterfly.
- Buson

My grumbling wife -
if only she were here!
This moon tonight…
- Issa

The summer river:
although there is a bridge, my horse
goes through the water.
- Shiki

I kill an ant
and realize my three children
have been watching.
- Shuson Kato

First autumn morning:
the mirror I stare into
shows my father’s face.
- Kijo Murakami

The only trouble is there are as many translations as there are haiku – or more. Take a look at what Charles Trumbull, editor of Modern Haiku has to say on the matter on The Poetry Blog for the Lilliput Review and you’ll see what I mean!

And finally, yes this is the last in my poetry series (was that a sigh of relief I heard?!)

© Sosha Srinivasan

Poetry rediscovered – 4

I recently came across a poem by Mary Jo Salter in The Atlantic – Executive Shoe Shine – which I loved!

I couldn’t find a decent page with this poem to link to so I am reproducing it below:

PONCE DE LEON – A MORNING WALK

You too if you work hard enough
can end up being the name of a street
in a drowsy little Indian town
a day’s drive from Mexico City
where orphans like bold Joselito
hustle in the taxi burro streets,
where cosmetic fragrances mingle
with scents of ripe and overripe fruits
& vegetables, where the smell of breakfast
& dinner are almost the same.

The natural odor of dung and body sweat
rises from the Zócalo into a sky, semi-
industrialized, housing the spirits of
blue señoritas with sun soaking into
their rainwashed skirts dried dustier
& wrinklier than red or green pepper.

While a crazy rooster’s crowing late
a brown baby delights in orange and yellow
balloons floating up like laughter
to tenement windows where a whole family
of older kids wave happy soap wands
that yield fat bubbles part air part
water part light that pop on the faces
of prickly strawhatted gents
rambling by below, ragged and alive.

One morning’s moment in this ageless
stone thoroughfare named after just one
dead Spaniard who wanted to live forever.

- Al Young

Poetry rediscovered – 3

I couldn’t find a decent page with this poem to link to so I am reproducing it below:

PARIAH

Years ago
you and I went our separate ways
without regret.
Only one thing I never quite understood
when you and I said farewell
and our house was sold.

Some empty vessels lay outside
in the courtyard
staring perhaps at us.
Others lay overturned,
hiding their faces.
A wilted creeper
climbed down the door,
complaining perhaps to us
or the water tap
about inadequate water.
All these I forget today.

I only remember
that pariah
who for some unknown reason
entered our empty room.
And the door was locked
from outside.

Three days later
when the deal was clinched
our house was sold.
We exchanged the keys for money.
The new owner
was shown each room.
And in one room we found
the corpse of that dog.

I have never heard that dog bark.
I only remember the smell of its corpse.
That smell still haunts me:
It returns from many things I touch.

– Amrita Pritam (translated from the original Punjabi by Pritish Nandy)

Poetry rediscovered – 2

I couldn’t find decent pages with these poems to link to so I am reproducing them below:

AN ELEGY IS PREPARING ITSELF

There are pines that are tall enough
Already. In the distance
The whining of saws; and needles,
silently slipping through the chosen cloth.
The stone, then as now, unfelt,
Perfectly weightless. And certain words,
That will come together to mourn,
Waiting in their dark clothes, apart.

- Donald Justice

EXCHANGE

It’s always there, like the drone
I hear when I pick up the telephone,
Steady, insistent, satisfied
With never having made a vow or lied
Or done anything, in fact, but been
Around, ubiquitous, yet mine.
The wish to die, I mean.

It’s always there, like the drone
I hear when the voice at the other end
Hangs up, having said it all
For once. As long as I hang on no other call
Can break though to me, standing alone.
I have to dial to hide that constant tone.
The fear of death, I mean.

- Dabney Stuart

Poetry rediscovered

Coming across an old diary filled with favorites jotted down set me reminiscing about my on-again, off-again affair with this genre of written expression. My first brush with it in school included rhyming singsong stuff like A. A. Milne’s Puppy and I and those wacky poems by Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, the pleasurable effect only broken by a frisson of unease caused by Walter de la Mare’s The Listeners.

Then came the shock – poetry need not rhyme and could describe nasty stuff that is usually shoved under the carpet. I learned this at IST Dar-es-Salaam when we did Stephen Crane’s In The Desert . To say that his verse is disquieting would be an understatement – more like visceral, bloody and in-your-face, forcing you to look beyond skin-deep man.

Then sometime in the early ’80s my dad brought home a volume of modern American poetry from the USIS library. I was intrigued enough to copy many of them out into an old diary that I still have! Some of my favorites among them:

– Charles Bukowski’s Short Order

– Donald Justice’s An Elegy is Preparing Itself.

– William Carlos Williams‘ The Red Wheelbarrow

– Al Young’s Ponce de Leon

– James Emanuel’s The Negro

– Dabney Stuart’s Exchange

– Gwendolyn Brooks‘ We Real Cool

When I came back to India, it was only natural I sought out poets from the subcontinent. Jibananda Das (Banalata Sen), Amrita Pritam (Pariah) and Imtiaz Dharker stand out among them.

I then came across this piece in The Hindu by V. Sudarshan in the mid ’80s and was impressed enough to cut it out and keep. I cannot locate it on the Internet – the Hindu’s archives don’t stretch back far enough I guess – so I’m reproducing it below for your reading pleasure.

ANOTHER KIND OF WINDOW

newspapers are colorconscious

display everything in black and
white
and forests might have moved in
the night
if not for
the daily bifocal squint
at the fine print

I get a clearer picture of
yesterdays
through the now familiar
perspective
of an amnesiac’s lapse of
memory

get to know the latest deaths
(those that couldn’t see beyond
the caste
mark on the village well included)
local
or otherwise

of the blind who allegedly
recovered sight
somewhere in the dark
continent the news of which
reached
the inside pages three
or four days later

or nearer home the neighbours
with their daughters lately ripe
wear the Sunday morning
matrimonial look
as they with a discriminating eye
separate the nettles
from the grooms

how the rivers thin to trickles!

frontpaged three columns wide
unidentified bodies grainy
and radiophotoed festoon
the nearby tree after a bomb
blast that had been
merely a warning

today the editorials are sartorial
carefully skirt expunged remarks
and whole scenes and maintain
the Dignity of the House (there
are

not many opportunities to hurl
brickbats and spittle freezes in
midair when the set up
is democratic) somewhere low

on page three squashed between
an advertisement for newfangled
undergarments at thirty percent
and an aborted token

protest a death by hanging
after the sour cud of
a careless pregnancy

continued on page eight column
eight is the life sentence the
judge
gave the now wifeless poor man
with
one nagging mistress and five
children

(four daughters and a male
bastard)
and the still bloody memory and
of course after the bonebundle
the newsdog hauled
out from the cupboards
of an otherwise

flawless politician
I am full
and
make it a point
to hurl open the window
drag in the fresh air
lick myself
clean again

like a cat
after

the daily dole
of newspaper gruel

– V. Sudarshan

© Sosha Srinivasan

Hello world!

Memory is a way of holding on to the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.”
- Kevin Arnold.

When I first read about blogs/blogging – I thought what could be less interesting  about reading about someone’s life?  Fiction, to me, had always seemed more interesting than life.  (Confessions of a “bookmad” individual – to quote my son.)  I have since come across the pits – dull as ditchwater meandering treatises, but also, happily blogs of the prolific, well traveled Mark Moxon (though www.moxon.net is not, technically speaking, a blog) and India’s very own Mrs. Fife – wonderfully humorous turn of phrase (jeete raho beti!)

I also decided my schooldays were interesting enough fodder for a blog… memories from my years at Cathedral & John Connon, Bombay (sorry Mumbai – old habits die hard) – Std 2 to Std 6 (1972-1976) – any CATs reading this? – and then at the International School of Tanganyika (IST) – Grade 7 to Grade 11 (1977-1981).  Both schools have been catalysts - I owe a great deal of what I am – my personality, outlook, philosophy, call it what you may – to the influence of teachers there, as well as friends I made at both schools.  Unfortunately it has been over a quarter of a century since I’ve been in touch with them….

I’d been trawling the Net for familiar names and a month or so ago I got lucky.  I had tried a Norwegian study buddy’s name, Morten (from IST), got several matches but none that I could be certain of.  Then in a, if I may say so, brilliant piece of detective work (though jealous critics may call me devious) I  keyed in his kid sister’s name, and bingo! there she was, larger than life with photo ID to boot.  She forwarded my mail and …

The truth is, I sat on it for a month.  Why?  I wasn’t sure of the reception I’d receive after 26 years – and  I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep up a regular correspondence… but I finally did, mostly on impulse.

I have tracked down a couple of other close friends from IST, one in the UK and one in the US of A – Anna, you are not going to believe what hit you!  DuBois will have to make do with a phone call since I could only trace a telephone number with the means at my disposal…

The suspense builds up – will I get the cold shoulder – have I got the right number… ? Don’t go away, I’ll be right back with the most recent update of the breaking news…

While you wait, here’s a lovely poem called ‘Sometimes’ to think about – and remember …

Across the fields of yesterday
He sometimes comes to me,
A little lad just back from play—
The lad I used to be.

And yet he smiles so wistfully
Once he has crept within,
I wonder if he hopes to see
The man I might have been.

- Thomas S. Jones, Jr.