It captures poems about people, places and sights and sounds associated with them.
By Dom Moraes Smear out the last star.No lights from the islandsOr hills. In the great squareThe prolonged vowel of silenceMakes itself plainly heardRound the ghost of a headlandClouds, leaves, shreds of birdEddy, hindering the wind. No vigils left to keep.No enemies left to slaughter.The rough roofs of the slopes,Loosely Read more…
By Jayanta Mahapatra Awaken them; they are knobs of soundthat seem to melt and crumple uplike some jellyfish of tropical seas,torn from sleep with a hand lined by prophecies.Listen hard; their male, gaunt world sprawls the pagelike rows of tree trunks reeking in the smokeof ages, the branches glazed and Read more…
By Jayanta Mahapatra The yellowed diary’s notes whisper in vernacular.They sound the forgotten posture,the cramped cry that forces me to hear that voice.Now I stumble back in your black-paged wake. No uneasy stir of clouddarkened the white skies of your day; the silenceof dust grazed in the long afterniin sun, Read more…
Jayanta Mahapatra Endless crow noisesA skull in the holy sandstilts its empty country towards hunger. White-clad widowed Womenpast the centers of their livesare waiting to enter the Great Temple Their austere eyesstare like those caught in a nethanging by the dawn’s shining strands of faith. The fail early light catchesruined, Read more…
By Jayanta Mahapatra A grey haze over the ricefields.The black cow grazing with her new-born calf,long-legged, unsteady—or trucks going past the high road:such things only claimthat I am looking out in search of memory,not death. Those little kisses on our cheeksmy long-dead grandmother gave me, orthe soft dampness of my Read more…
By Gieve Patel It is startling to see how swiftlyA man may be slicedFrom chin to prick,How easily the bonesHe has felt wholeUnder his chestFor a sixty, seventy yearsMay be snapped,With what calmLiver, lung and heartBe examined, the bowelsNoted for defect, the brainFor haemorrhage,And all these insidesThat have for a Read more…
By Dr. Gieve Patel The Saurashtra Express waits to startChained patiently to the platform,Good pet, while I clamber inTo take my reserved window seatAnd settle into the half-empty compartment’sCool; the odour of human manureVague and sharp drifts inFrom adjoining platforms.The station’s population of porters,Stall-keepers, toughs and vagabonds relieve themselvesTicketless, into Read more…
By Dr. Gieve Patel Text Book A case in point, the expert says;A woman thrust glowing faggotsWhere properlyHer son’s sparrow should nest.Puerile in-law practice, he says,But good as any otherTo set the story rolling; beginWith a burn in the sparrow’s nestTo extend over all therefrom emergingFan and flourish of the Read more…
By A.K.Ramanujam Composed as I am, like others, of elements on certain well-known lists,father’s seed and mother’s egg gathering earth, air, fire, mostly water, into a mulberry mass,moulding calcium, carbon, even gold, magnesium and such, into a chattering self tangledin love and work, scary dreams, capable of eyes that can Read more…
By A.K.Ramanujam walking in museums of quartz or the aisles of bookstacks looking at their geometry without curves and the layers of transparency that makes them opaque, dwelling on the yellower vein in the yellow amber or touching a book that has gold on its spine, I think of snakes. Read more…