by Joy Goswami
Heart, will you?
The house shines in the sky
Those girls and boys on the roof
Drop a line to catch the ferryboat moon
Winding it up from the clouds higher, still higher into the sky
Off you go—don’t you want to go close to them? As close as lightning blue?
A house in ruins. Grass everywhere.
Is anybody home?
Imbecile anger, loud lamentations
Congeal into lumps and spin
Not a friend—a friend’s living cadaver
Waves his hand inside the window
On this side of the glass the long grass
Swarms with insects
In the west, the bamboo grove. Along its edges, water.
The evening halts in the rice field.
Bits of broken cloud in the water. A hazy bustle—
Bare bodies, towels around waists, long fishing rods, baskets—
Gangs of fisher-boys coming home.
Do you wish you could go with them now?
The prisoner doesn’t answer. He simply sketches the evening
Onto the floor.
The tortoise is moving. From his back the planet suddenly
Rolls off, plummets
In space the rabbit wakes—leaps to catch the sphere
The sky glistens up in the white incandescence
Of a meteor
Trees blindborn.
Lamps, trees from birth.
To lamplife I go—blindfolded—
Fierce flamedance on my head.
In the mud you seemed like a mudbird to me.
Are you looking for fish? Is it me you’re gathering food for
With your long thin beak?
My darling mother-bird, in dreams I call
Your Ma-name
Your womb-pitcher is dry now, filled only with sandy earth
But still, old woman, will you let me
Curl up and lie among your eggs just once?
A ghost has no woman to mate with.
And so, one hand on the sun, one on the moon
He wants to mate with the earth, penetrating
Active volcanoes about to burst—
When the clouds crack open you can hear it—
The tongueless lovecry of his ungratified thirst.
I was stuffed shoulder-deep in your maleface.
Now from charcoal-black wood
Steam rises. I butt my head in all directions
Cracking through the wind’s invisible walls
Molten flame rises.
Then one day,
In the guise of half a lion, destined man—
Your huge body breaks open a pillar, sprawls across my knees,
Is torn apart by my nails, my pen.
My scorpion digs sand—
The sun troubles him
When the wind or the weight of people shifts the sand
He emerges
On shaky legs
He hunts for stones, makes tunnels under them
It’s only at night that his body floats up, fills the horizon
In the sky above the sea
He moves his star-made horns, his fiery stings
Whimsically
Settlements sleep, on all the world’s sea-voyages
Only the sailors can see him.
The jackass sits in the field
A mountain on his head.
On the plate before him, earth. Grass.
He eats, digs a hole in the plate—
Cuts through layer by layer as in a pot of curd—
His hunger knows no end—mineral riches
Going going gone—deepest oil reserves emptied
In slurpy sips
With mudgravy-smeared hands, the jackass drums the world
As if it were an empty plate
Full of holes
The blind walk. The lame walk. Sticks
Walk beside them like old friends.
Armless. Hairless. Sore.
Bandaged. Ridiculously deformed.
Sitting in wooden boxes with wheels—
Carrying everyone along, this slow procession walks
As blazing rays of the setting sun
Crack through enormous gobbets of cloud
Down the slope down the slope
Into the oven they all go
Bandages, cloth, wood, wheel, damaged bone
Pieces of unmet desire
Turn into so many coloured feathers and scatter into the sky
Even now, off and on, those colours waft into the field below the gooseberry tree
Renu ma, the venomous winged serpent has entered
My room—hear it squawk
Renu ma, the signalling-tree stands at a distance
The crow, burnt by a touch of moonlight
Mistaking serpent for rope, I grab and climb into the branches
Poison peels off from the serpent
Renu ma, your hands clap—in the night sky
The luminous winged serpent spreads its wings and flees
There. The tide of time.
From cement banks I dip my hands
Into it.
My fingers melt. Wrists, arms
Melt. My head on my shoulders
I am a limbless god
Sitting on the back of a whirling ball
Sketched with rivers and rills.
I revolve in emptiness.
A touch of heat opens my eyes. I push away a layer of sand
And come out. The mountains are ice-less
The trees standing sticks of wood
Cities iron brick black heaps of concrete mud
The pale yellowish sun spread like a giant wheel
In a sky that’s seven billion years old
All its fuel burnt up and gone
My palms pressed together I stand in the sea-pit of sand
Come, bless me, shed—not light—
But ashes, burnt by the sun!
They are ash-faced. They are extinguished. They
Are smouldering wood.
In the form of half-burned fish buried deep under slime they
Have been escaping for a long time.
A century passes with every second
Now it’s my job to dig their beds
To tuck them in tenderly, cover them
Not with sheets and blankets—earth
They are as our mothers and fathers. I must find their bones.
And so I dig hundreds of foxholes bunkers graves pits
I rummage through so many tears, so much grief anger ash.
This is the last dove. This, the last
Flag of peace. Planted in the neck. But
The pointed iron pole doesn’t stop at the neck—goes on.
Looks for the spine—electrode.
Finds it. Touches it. Drills a hole
And days pass, beyond ten million years
Those who come afterwards see
The statue of a sitting man, a bird on his shoulder
Each an ember!
The oar falls out of the boat
Into the water
The ash-grey water heaves just once into blackness
Where is that oar now?
Two inquisitive fish, two pieces of stone, wood, a broken bicycle.
Driven into the muck next to a ring, a couple of coins. Their eyes
Gleam in the dark. They have been in the water so long
They too are now some kind of creature.
Landing near the lost oar, I see it
Has birthed wings on either side, spikes on its back, a horn on its nose, and
Tied by a rope to its horn a giant boat which it steers once again
Through rain after rain, past a fogged and drowning world.
So, are you trustworthy? Or have you murdered trust?
Behind you spins a grindstone and a wheel of fire
In front of you flies a golden kite and a flute, its wings outspread
In between,
the fig-tree. In between, the rope and the noose.
I never kept the sky-truths hidden
Just open a bird’s skull and see.
In the lower reaches the male and female birds flew.
Holding space like a tilted bowl far above
I used to capture them on film.
The one who had witnessed this scene, today not even light
Can escape from within him.
There’s neither day nor night there, just the frozen
Jelly of dark time the measure of a beat.
All around him the ash-filled sockets
Of extinct constellations.
Taking the vast light with me I edge away
From its circular path, slowly, slowly, towards outermost space…
Burning, the birds fall
As they sizzle into the water I
Wake
From a millennial
Sleep
Crowned by
Yawning skypit, ironcloud, and below,
Spinning, steadily sinking, the earth’s soundless scream.
I saw dream upon dream as the day drew on.
After describing slaughter upon slaughter
Peace descended, leapt over the dead bodies, left for the distant wilds…
From its body sparks still flew
Drops of blood and jubilation.
On the horizon a knot of clouds. A withheld storm…
On the other side of scene upon scene
A headless painter paints me
In this, my current form.
The sea? Or the ancient python? Circumscribing the earth
It sleeps.
In the cavity of its open mouth
Darkness. The ocean roar.
This is the path All living beings enter unwittingly
On the verge of that forest
You sit with your back against a tree trunk at the moment of
death Your eyes rest on the glittering eyes of the python
At last
You see it is blind. Its eyes pebbles, shining only
In the light of the moon
You see that roaring current is really
A tongueless note
You see the pit of its mouth
Is limitless black—in which a few stars float
...................................The meteorites have fallen into the sea
Before that long tails of fire in the sky—blink Before that trees land mountains in dazzling white flash— blink
Reptilian birds freeze as they fly
The earth’s end precisely one blink away
Since then, this is the dream every bird sees, before dying
Finale
Divine grace, like a burst of red-hibiscus
Behind my head
The eastern sky lights up
Blood rushes to night’s head
Divine grace—Great Splendour!—fame’s flesh
And bones are ground to dust in its mouth
Two hands made of holy-fire
Come together in me and say:
Speak, what do you want in this place
Of water? How do you want it?
Without answering I see
The sun bursts into utter ash
The ash reels repeatedly
One sun births a thousand
In sun after sun I see the writing
Hasn’t paused for a second
In front of me, Ganesha sits
Inscribing the sky
Circle upon circle
The universe is manifesting itself
Even as I describe this scene
O Word, Brahma’s mouth, I
Find the speed of light in my body
I cleave both your shores
I pierce through and I’m gone…
from
Moutat Moheswar (2005)
Shiva, My High
He who is simply a window is good
2
Is only the window good?
The one still moon?
Oh but he’s gone walking on the sea-peaks
The road?
Forever before and behind the traveller
The mute who blazes?—He is light
3
Neither Shiva nor Shyam
Neither ocean nor milk
Neither banyan nor vow
Neither prickly pear nor sand
Neither weeping nor wailing
In the small hours of the bridal chamber
I am the snake wrapped around your legs
4
Negligible, the extreme sky
Mostly just moon from a window
Posing riddles all night I grew easy
Despite the fantastic danger it saw, the window went wild
Why is life asleep all day in the corpse?
I give him the blue lioness.
Let him see danger for the fantastic refuge it is
6
He was the laughter in the hooligan’s soul
With him were the geese, lit by a godly light
The train has crossed the last field
Abandoning the field, a bow of herons rises
It’s goodbye at last to the geese who lit up our homes
He is still around. His
Laughter turns to dust across the land
7
In softness I’ll set out from home
In birdness I’ll set out from language
On death row, the murderer, still smouldering, will shrink below
On the distant ground I’ll see it breaking down
Your colossal tax-collecting machinery
8
Come but burn but die but can you, dark?
Put your deep hand down
You won’t be caught otherwise, the sand-filled doors of hundreds and hundreds
Of midwives won’t allow entry
The eastern sky a dot, from it a string drawn west
Holding on to the hooked pole of a finger one last time
Along an endless ropeway the shapes of hanging men
Enter the pit of the horizon
Look—and calling your sky-mother’s name in the painted canvas
Be drawn—the portrait of me
9
This is only because the clouds rumbled in a funny dream
Otherwise, not a single sale until now
Just imagine, such a lofty thirst untouchable!
Haven’t the dust motes given you the gift they scrabbled up from the mud-floor?
Despite that the device lost its memory in the sky-jungle!
Tapping shifty buttons, net-net, web-web
Itchy fingers do their google-dance
So the clouds took pity and rumbled? Having survived, thirst returned?
If someone takes me for a pitcher and peeps in
It will be clear, neither water nor pebbles, I’m stuffed to my neck with stacks of golden coins
14
My mind dies anew
What can I possibly want now
Two days of sky and three days of sky
The crows cry caw and drizzle from the sky
What’s spread over my head is just hope
The water reaches my waist, who hopes against hope in water?
That shadow of a shadow in water, I find just one scene in there
Having overwhelmed the earth, the stars turn to ash in your care
16
This book will save you from many storms
This book has risen out of much water
Nothing much—storm, water
This book a sky-scraping post standing at the end of the field to catch lightning
Below it, evening
Redblue pots and pans
Genies and fairies
Jackals and storks
19
Each time I climb into the sky, the kites arrive
Consider me kin
The birds fly, their bodies against mine
Taking fluffed white cotton for a cloud
A
plane or two
Breaks its heart and enters, breaks its back and leaves
Even after all this you want to know—
Age or tree?
Want to know my home address?
Which khansama’s lane? Which number breeze?
Am I the only one who knows zilch about how many bridges cross over me?
How many wings made of my flight alone are still around, and where?
21
This book is Salvador Dali’s clock melting under water
That person is me reading writing deleting under water
22
Let me show you white in a new-way. In a life-way
Let me show you colour.
Let me lean against you in a wall-way.
Let me get to know you in a male-way.
I do and see, uh-oh, it’s a woman!
‘What’s the big deal, being a she-spook in a ghost’s dream?’
I say, and see it’s no use
Sit alone in the dark and recite the virtuous news.
Descending from day into night the water washes away
Eyes, nose, tresses, complexion, navel, breast
What floats is simply white, the simple white of your skeleton
What can I do about it!
Let me vanish into the sky instead
28
The weight of a feather the instant I sit down
I give you countless cycles
In writing
Fabulous seats! Sit. Tell me
What do you want to do now?
What else?
Race off, causing accidents again all around!
31
This story is an axe.
Come and reap its fruit.
This story is a bird’s skull.
After its head is cut off, its blood and guts cleaned
The featherless sack that remains
And waves its skinned arms in both directions—
Into its stomach I tell this story.
