Prelude to Rama’s Rendezvous
The reflections green and golden
the river catches in negative black;
the rainbow weeps - a child lost in industrial fair,
a multi-coloured Malvolio with infra-red and ultra-violet for added effect.
Behold the oceans eye-full now!
HUSH!
The factory siren clarions states’ call,
time world achieves productivity;
let’s go to work, first things first.
Kodaikanal, 1990
Momentary glimpses do stay in memory:
I was twenty four, and surprised
he remembered me. There was
no mistaking, that smile of recognition
the boatman showed.
*
We went boating, each one of us, an oar
he told me, amiably, that he was
(in his sixties, I guessed)
reliving his youth’s summer in this resort;
it stands for the illusion of summer
or the summer of illusion, I do not remember.
*
The nostalgia, amid two tin beers, of youth
is like the dip of oar in those waters;
but the thought of myself at his age...?
he soothed me, told me that doubts
when are not rats, are like crabs
(but both gnaw your thought-sod!),
life when not young is old
time past is all we have, a shipment of recollections
that are shadows, active in youth
and memories when old.
*
Suddenly, drawn to the chatter of birds,
stillness of hands holding the oars,
I found I had lost count
the number of times our muscles had flexed;
I looked at him bewildered, in awe and wonder,
lost my physical presence, but
there he was, solid before me and chatting
‘Come on, row along, some more beer?
O2
→
Δ
Words
intemperateness, of words
the chores, of words
words
the normal boredom of words
no poet utters these words who is no curiouser
but there is a blatant silence before sounds
and a curious poet can capture and freeze
the precipitated dew drops
on realisation of their earlier sublimation;
YES:
words are the reagents
are the catalysts
the brain workers
no mere brawns.
The delight of wording right words is no worldy thing;
the surface, the air, the light
have the last laugh - it requires dexterity
of a vet
who detects
the exact pore
where ticks
have entrenched
themselves.
in a poodle-haired,
quagmiric
labyrinthine bog.
dog.
But there is no assurance
you’ve got it
must have to misjudge to judge
there is no purity without dirt
no abstract without concrete
no rain without heat.
words
(however) intemperate, the words
(howsoever) dulsome and choric, the words
are the mechanics lying beneath the wagon
a spanner tucked between teeth.
KAVI
When you are young and poor at math
you are fascinated towards your English teacher
(In India, it’s still a foreign language!)
Shakespeare comes to life even as synapse functions
Wordsworth and Shelley are part and parcel
of your adolescent favourites
(Lawrence, you get to know later
Lady Chatterley the flash point)
Grammar inherent, poetry immanent
(only you don’t know to put pen on paper then)
I was also poor at math
and fed my first thoughts
when I dreamt the Muse;
and felt drawn to the late librarian at Hull
(felt drawn by the neighbouring girls, too,
but that inspiration came later:
all the same both helped me with images and imageries)
No . The girls did one better,
kindled the embers more times than Yeats or anyone;
urgencies physical mean more than enjambe-
ments and Hyacinths had newer bearings
concentration was becoming a problem;
some said, ‘take a course in writing’
others: ‘study the tradition!’
(intercourse with words!)
‘What’s in a name?’... it’s a game all the same.
Since, ever since I’ve been writing
more copiously than ever
(no, I won’t be discovered in anthologies),
drooling day after day over files and notes.
What am I? a poetaster?
a contemporary clerk of a versifier?....
