…starting over in this city
I plant old seeds in familiar dirt
and wait for different flowers…
Part 25 of the series: “A story in many unequal parts, some missing” is now online! Read the poem here.
And catch up on the previous post that has the recording of Part 16 if you haven’t heard it already!!
Sharing this piece from September 29th, 2016. It was written for dVerse Poets, inspired by Wallace Stevens’ classic, ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’. But interestingly, this poem was included in a dverse poets anthology called CHIAROSCURO which is supposedly part of the proposed LunarCodex to be inducted into the Polaris time capsule, targeted for the 2023 SpaceX/ Astrobotic Griffin lander/ NASA VIPER rover mission, headed for the Lunar South Pole. I have no idea how to process this information, but there it is.
****
I
how many mirrors
has this morning hung
everywhere I see my soul
II
like mirror shards
the morning dew falls
suddenly a thousand skies
III
my grandmother’s mirror
photoshopping my image
with her soft eyes
IV
somedays the mirror
stretches a hand
to catch a falling tear
V
between me and the mirror
seven steps
seven presumptions
VI
the sky is our mirror
you see the falling stars
I am bewitched by the moon
VII
empty mirror
how much did I lose of myself
leaving you
VIII
free,
the way we looked
before there were mirrors
IX
hidden behind the mirror
all those reflections
before this
X
today the mirror
casts three reflections
asking me to choose
XI
in his rearview mirror
he brings home
the waxing moon
XII
then what saved Narcissus?
a ripple?
a tear?
XIII
three blackbirds
flying past the mirror
six pause
This is the verdant Cauvery delta. The Vennar distributary glides through lush paddy fields here in Tanjavur, singing songs from a past replete with sea-faring kings, opulent cities, magnificent architecture and enduring culture. Tanjavur — capital of the mighty Chola dynasty that ruled this part of the southern peninsula for many centuries. A solitary pond heron on the far bank studies its reflection. Blood was spilt here. Temples were raised. History was shaped and reshaped on the banks of the Cauvery. The river that knows it all.
water. time.
the relentless movement.
within it, within it, the stillness
A beloved king. A venerated deity. A stunning temple. Legend has it that elephants dragged giant blocks up an inclined ramp to construct the tower that soars over 200 feet. This was more than a thousand years ago. You can sense that energy. You can feel spacetime collapsing. You know several generations have sat where you sit, have felt what you feel, have seen what you see. So has Raja Raja – king of kings. The tower takes on a golden hue as the sun sets slowly. The sun that knows it all.
first light:
the flutter of wings, the temple bell,
a breeze waking stone after stone
That isn’t the only great temple. A few miles down, the heir repeated the feat of his father raising a graceful edifice with breath-taking craftsmanship. A century later, another Chola monarch erected a formidable beauty with decorated columns and horse-drawn chariots carved from stone. The gods were exalted with wisdom and skill, faith and art. Human endeavour that has survived to tell its tale. I wonder as I walk down a pillared corridor, if I have those tools. What do I hold dear? How do I revere? What story do I tell? I see them stand strong and tall. The temples that know it all.
not yet dawn
not quite night, just a fragile hush
as if the sky is about to answer
Paddy fields line both sides of the highway. I stop to watch the white egrets poke around in the water. The roar of the irrigation pump, the outlines of tractors and bullock-drawn ploughs, the bent backs of toiling farmers, kingfishers and drongos perched on overhead wires, large statues of village protector-deities — fierce warriors watching over people and livestock and crops, the romance of pastoral deliberation, the aroma of frothing cups of filter coffee, life as I know it fading into the distance…I can understand how this moment contains everything that came before it. And everything that is yet to come. What matters, what can wait, what we need to do, what is beyond us. That truth has never changed. In all this time. Time that knows it all.
swinging from the branch
of a tamarind tree
the chain from an old tyre-swing
****
India Travelogue… Tanjavur (The Three Great Living Chola Temples)
Before dawn, the devout wait with offerings on one side of the road, tourists wait with cameras, on the other. This is the traditional alms-giving ceremony for monks and novices from the many Wats in Luang Prabang. An affirmation of community, dedication, faith, austere living and resounding quiet. What is it like to live like that, with the kind of simplicity that questions by just being, with a conviction that answers by not just being? To find yourself, how much do you have to lose? To lose yourself, how much do you have to find? Are these my choices?
inside the apple
the worm,
inside the worm, the apple
A bamboo bridge spans the Nam Khan River where it meets the Mekong, a tranquil horse-shoe confluence at one end of this quaint town. Nearby, an adept performer recounts stories of kings and demons, queens and lovers — myths from the rivers, the hills and the forests beyond — to the sound of the bamboo pipes of the Khene. Once upon a time. That place where everything begins. Love. God. Childhood. Memories. Forever. Once upon a time. The notes ring high into the starless night. Two rivers listen together, hand in hand.
soft starsong —
a cloud opens its arms
to a waiting moon
UXO- Unexploded Ordnance. The way wars from the past still continue to kill and maim. The UXO centre is like a slash of dark reality, away from the busy hub where cafes and temples sit cheek by jowl, where the brown Mekong slithers against the mountains, where the night market opens like a magic box with its bright lights and exotic aromas, where saffron-robed monks walk impervious to curious glances, where you are reminded that it is possible, somehow, to have a parallel reality without ordnance, without unexploded ordnance, without wars that don’t end, without wars, without a little girl picking up one of those deadly bombies in a paddy field.
for the cat
for the pigeon
more than enough sunshine
A small boat speeds across the Mekong. This river is an acquaintance, we have talked before, now it feels familiar, it feels strange. But we talk again. On the other side, on the undulating hills, between old-growth trees, curated gardens reveal surprises of joyous colour. As the evening grows long, the sun mixes in the brown water. Some distance away, in the tropical rainforest, water spills into cascading turquoise pools even as rescued bears recover in the sanctuary below the Kuang Si waterfall. This is tranquil land. Where the breeze gently traces the soft curves of the Wats. Where lotus flowers open and close in ancient ponds. Where the river walks with you. Even when you aren’t walking. Talks to you. Even when you have finished talking. Where lost dreams are found. Where the forgotten lives. Where wounds can, without even knowing it, be healed.
a lone bee
waits for a lily bloom:
what the heart knows, it knows
****
Laos Travelogue… Luang Prabang
Here, in the Dead Sea, I feel possibility. I, who cannot swim, can walk on this water. Here, the sun prepares for its downward journey, slowly, painfully, like a warrior who has seen too much, done too much. Here, the echoes come from a faraway time to brush your skin. Here, nature opens a tiny window to give you a glimpse of her power. This water holds you in a warm embrace even as you drown in the haunting stories of the hills and the wind and the sky.
like the throb of a poem
written long ago
some words I understand, some words I feel
Driving towards Karak, that early Spring, he pulls over, suddenly. Look, he says, pointing to a clutch of black iris plants, standing tall, seemingly alone, on the side of a dry desert road. Fragile, strong, the colour of night, the luminescence of a newly formed sun, a flower I had never seen before. How many things have I met in my life that are made entirely of primal joy?
the daytime moon:
as if a child glued it to the sky
eyes bright with mischief
Within minutes, the dust encircled us, the sandstone rocks seemed to melt, the rat-a-tat of sand on the car-roof was loud, incessant and terrifying. My first sandstorm came without warning to Wadi Rum. We drank tea as we sheltered on a rock. The most morbid of fears are tempered by a cup of tea. This much is true. Storms rage for hours. But then they pass. That too is true. Most life lessons are learnt on that thin edge between how things are and how they should have been. That can be true, if you allow it.
because
the night never ends
it just turns to morning
I leave Petra not through the imposing Siq, but through a longer, more difficult route- Wadi Muthlim, the dark canyon that might have once directed flash floods away from the city. Squeezing through narrow tunnels, clambering over rocks, following a dry river bed, I find my way back into the sunshine. Enough time to wonder about what being in a place where people lived in such magnificence 2000 years ago, tells me about my own life, about what someone or something will know about me 2000 years hence. What is a trail that isn’t a trail left in stone?
everywhere a pebble has been
everywhere a wave has been
a part of me has been there, is still there
****
Jordan Travelogue… Dead Sea/Karak/Wadi Rum/Petra
In Nairobi, after feeding a giraffe, I sanitize my hands with something smelling of lavender and the world I left behind. A safari guide laughs. A driver joins in. And another. They tell me giraffe saliva is a natural antiseptic. Something I should remember if I get lost in the savannah. The giraffes watch us, expressionless.
leaving our shoes at the door
we enter the stranger’s home
with bowed heads
Where the equator crosses the dry asphalt in Nakuru, young men show us science tricks. Water swirls in opposite directions in the two hemispheres. Not just water, I say to myself. It feels strange, standing there, straddling an imaginary line, as if I am larger than life and this planet that neither cares, nor stops to ask, is now, for the first time, beneath my feet.
swimming
under the horizon
fish tell fish ancient land myths
Face to face with a young leopard in Samburu, I wish I can tell what he is thinking. But here, in the wild, I want everything to talk so through their words, through their primal poetry, I can go back to the silence of the beginning. Before I was. Before they were. Before anything was. When everything made sense.
the delicate balance of being —
not one extra movement
not one extra breath
Then the sun sets over the acacia trees, the grass mirroring the hues of the sky, the distant roar of a lion turning everything surreal, the last impalas fading away, crocodiles now invisible in the murky water, darkness pouring down like rain, silhouettes draining into a black sea… between splutter and cough and growl and yawn, all goes quiet.
just the earth
still going round
and round and round…
****
Kenya Travelogue… Nairobi/ Nakuru/Samburu
Of all the ways to encounter loss, I picked the one in which it arrives as a stranger. A stranger who emerges from the bowels of a subway station, into the sunlight, as I hurtle down the steps into the darkness, directly in his path, looking away, refusing to meet his gaze, only a strong musky scent of an unborn morning , staining the air as we pass.
It returns sometimes, that fragrance, like a wind from a faraway place, come to moult its memory skin . Or like a pigeon that flew into a room that it doesn’t know how to escape, thrashing against the glass pane, screaming at the walls in low, gurgling sounds, rising and falling, rising and falling, trapped, afraid…alone.
On some nights, the stranger stops and calls my name. A name he should not know. A voice I should not recognize. A longing that should not be. For a morning, yet to come.
what should we call it,
the sky that does not know
it is the sky?
We build bridges. Bridges between our realities.
Temporary bridges. Retractable bridges. Bridges that will bring us back. Bridges made of dreams. Bridges made of fear. Bridges made of want.
But bridges don’t unite realities. They become an alternative. A sacred middle. Not belonging. Not owning. Distorting space. Distorting distance. I stood for long on a bridge that night, below a restless moon, above an endless landfill of broken bridges. Here the questions change. The premise changes. The headwinds scatter, directionless. Silence erodes into a roar. Time starts and stops. Starts and stops. Like the staccato hymn of a universe, spinning into itself.
At that point between truths, even then, the answers remain the same.
no road
no destination
but what if we had continued walking?
I think it is the simplest thing I have to say, but it must negotiate a labyrinth of pride and bile with nothing to light its way. Last night, I studied its paradoxes through the evening’s strawberry haze. How does it begin? Wasn’t failure the first consciousness, wasn’t death the first precept. We know these things like the taste of our own mouths. Not as a taste, not as knowing. Still, we elevate their antonyms — a god, a love, a lover, a time — we embellish them with the infinite, the eternal, one thing containing the other, with victory. How else should we process our own defeat? How does it begin? Always, always with a desire for how it should end. And then we are working our way backwards while trying to move forward. How then, does it not get trapped in the middle? The simplest thing I have to say wants the complexity of your understanding. The first suggestions of darkness appear like clues across the sky.
a different wind
a different night
why would silence be the same?
(1) around the military cantonment the way this city has grown: a camouflage truck, a school bus, an ambulance, wait together for a green light (2) past Danang and Hue a few miles from the DMZ the guide pulls out two cans of coke — one day soon, he says, he will move to California (3) origami cranes one, two… a thousand — waiting at the Hiroshima memorial: things fall things rise (4) the invisible wars: the invisible dead: “what big eyes you have,” she cried, “the better to see you with, my dear,” the wolf replied (5) on a quiet street in Luang Prabang the unexploded ordnance centre — a grandmother covers a little girl’s eyes (6) downtown Berlin: in a dozen languages they ask for directions — to the topography of terror to the palace of tears (7) at the bottom of every sea a ship, a plane, a soldier asking evolution the same question: “why?” (8) on large banners in the Warsaw museum bits of resistance poetry — outside, a man dozes in a rush-hour bus heading to the new old town (9) folding a world map war zone collapsing into war zone someone will die from something that will fall from someone else’s sky (10) late March in London a fog-laden sky goes from pewter to troubled black somewhere the sun has set somewhere the sun has to set (11) space and time morph at yet another border crossing — she bows under the weight of an entire lifetime stuffed into an old backpack (12) Kanchanaburi war cemetery so many people so far from home: here lie so many stories unheard/ untold (13) adrift, afraid, on a refugee boat: home, already a memory limp from cold sea-spray (14) ringing in the desert air children reciting the alphabet A for anti-aircraft guns B for bombs, big, bad, bombs C for compassion that still hasn't come
THOUGHT PURGE 