by Joy Goswami
From its long cut throat cloud-seeds bub-bub-bubble up
Cut loose and fly, as if fruit.
She says, Life comes to fruition on a tree.
Here’s the flying axe. Leaping to grab it in your hand
Be wonderstruck, woodcutter!
Fell this entire story to the ground along with the trees
Man will read it and be amazed
36
I survive by imitating the cowdust hour
Even counting the dust
Feeds me
The space cleared by changing clouds
That’s where I shove in the sky
The sunset knows this
Having learnt the sunbeams by heart, I too read on in silence
In river-waters woods mountains
Words are scattered in the fields
The simple meaning locked inside speech becomes restless
I pick up the peas from its cage
And scatter them on this page and that
38
If I were to openly declare the sky to you
A partial means would be the hills
Perhaps even the boats
Everyone knows the only other means
Raised high on the ultimate roof
Even today my window is afloat
Fall into step beside me and sleep, you’ll realize—
How can I sleep while walking?
Having asked me this question, lose miserably, honey.
Considering X-fruit on this tree, Y-flower on that tree
Flinging the kiss of kisses on your two eyes like sweet offerings of worship
She makes sure you know
She too sleeps with another god
She too is true, in a libertine, laidback way
What’s not to understand about that!
Sure I openly rented you the moon
But that’s not to eat and sleep in!
Can’t you tell by the bow-shaped roof
That even the sky is merely a hut?
Place a ladder there and, if you can, climb up to the roof
Even placing a snake will do. From Shiva’s dreadlocks
Soft rubber ropes
Mistaken-snakes swish sway swing away
But my window is even more afloat
Take a peek down there
The little wood has merged with the great forest
The stars roll down the sides of the mountains
The boat splashes from a height into the water
Bunches of stars stick to the swollen sails
Having accounted for all losses and gains
Around midnight the half-egg moon returns once again to the sky
Gleams like an aboriginal African drum…
Boy oh boy, if only I’d played it once!
40
They are no one none of them mine
They are not all mine none mine
Say Shiva-Shiva, say Shiva-Shiva
Broken house, crow crematorium
The river spins, O Immemorial
Sit aside, the canoe will sink
In the dark the girls roam
Scaling the water the girls roam
Light the lamp-lamp, light the lamp
41
In the shade it was made plain all along, yet
Your summer doesn’t diminish
You are a page or two in a book or two
This bullet belongs to no other but you
It
Is plural, you belong to loneliness
You’ll find right here like the palm of your hand
An island, its tree-flags flying
How many examples it took me to despatch
That much sky to you!
When thirst dries up, it turns to sand
Camels tank up on sand and roam
Becoming a thorn on the thorn bush the rainbird lives
Why then does the sky lie down with the window at its head
And lean on its side to watch
Two or three women running below your window at all hours
Having broken through the bushes?
43
That day what a lethal river you drank from your glass
You know so many fresh eggs about every issue
Today you’re being cruelly punished for it
He survives by entering toys, soaked to the skin in the guise of a cuckoo in the sand
In dreams his sun rises
Sunset dissolves in the dry belly of an enormous eggshell
All day he finds only the shadow of the Universe in the palm of his hand
You alone, acute in your thirst
Sitting on your boxes at the station, the train’s howling mouth in the distance
44
There. I wrote 22 on the slate and the bird’s two legs were drawn.
With a mygoodness! mygod! now explain shadowthick skyblue to me
Where the slate ends, that’s where the boundary of the Universe begins
Clapping the slateblack touchstone sky to my head
With both hands
I’ve come to this vast wilderness at the end of the world
Only to learn how to sketch the rumbling of the clouds
But the minute I drew its legs, the bird tore off my head with its claws
And crossing all boundaries flung it splat! into the water
Looking for it I’ve been going around in circles
Round and round with numerous nor’westers lost in wheels
Within wheels
Who knows in which pond or pool my head
Floats absentmindedly drinking water or smoking a hookah
In the afternoons and evenings—
Sometimes its
Gurgling sounds can be heard quite clearly when the clouds rumble
46
Tell me why o why, dear blackest of black, is your life such a whiz
Tell me why o why, dear greenest of green, does it dawn
Why call the next dawn near only to set it ablaze
Everyone’s a friend’s friend, but who’s a forever-friend, just one, for ever
If ever you get hold of such a book of books tear it to shreds, sever
My breeze touches your body as you roam through your days
The poet himself said, never in autumn has such a kite of kites taken flight
That’s why she took him into Herself in the many-many forms of Many
Any minute now you’ll find the trap in the sky that catches the kite and see, my!
It’s the sky that’s a hanging garden
Whatever happened to Nebuchadnezzar, never saw him ever afterwards
Having suddenly lost its monarch midstream, what’s life to do with the rest?
Keep a hand at hand, keep your face at hand, keep a new thug
At your breast
Tell me why o why, dear poet’s poet, the killer serpentina thinks:
What if he doesn’t turn around to look at me, poison?
Durga stands on the shore, it’s late it’s late it’s late,
Why doesn’t he come closer, immersion?
Sleeplessly the problem burns, in deepest sleep right next to it
Lies its crimson solution
49
I keep arriving from the other infinite
This space-time that you all know so well, from its opposite
Side I arrive and fall burning into the shadow of that machine
If one cares to, it’s possible to skewer
Circular or spiral, flat serpentine all kinds of
Galaxies like kababs on a needle-tipped long hard ray of light
Held in one’s fist
We’ll need a third infinite then
Otherwise where shall I roast so many lumps of fire?
50
Is the sky no good once it’s written?
Incessant new shout
Such unbroken tears brawl
My childhood books
Moon stars glowworms
That’s why I’m
dew why I’m dew
In the morning in the mouth of grass, in lotus leaves, dazzling anniversary diamonds
When new books are gold
Why don’t you take a good look at me?
The horizon’s hardly your agenda!
Surely there’s some horrible lightning-tinted meaning
Surely the past is a handful of jubilant fire-tinted trees
Surely a handful of vast fields fly with the trees
After all, I did take the moon to my lips of my own free will
The minute I did, I saw it wax speedily to the
Full
Fortune drips
Into the mouth-cave
After all, I do know that death saves itself by covering its ears
I know there’s a debt even in your flawless lotus
I know how harshly the night dries up
I know the day is a tight restraint
And the last battlefield is blue
Surely, you too must’ve heard blue from a stranger’s mouth
Must’ve heard Picasso’s blue experience and the ocean’s
I, too, am nothing but blue
I sleep so often with such replete frankness
In poetry’s absorption
I heard the weaver-bird called the sparrow
And uttered four incomparable sky-wide threats:
One—texts, books, alphabets
Spread them all out and hold them open
Letters drizzle down mothers fathers great-grandfathers constellations all…
Two—shoes that will personally make you tour abundant dust
Will gain you admission into strings of rippling roads
The kind who wear small smiles
And are always home
Or up on the rooftop
Immediately after the shoes, the shoulder-bag. That’s number three.
In which are present numerous excellent medicines,
I’ll give them to you, I’ll take them myself.
Fourth—the umbrella—how automatic!
Opens at a touch, in a blink not an umbrella but the
ozonesphere
That saves this precious pate of mine
From ultraviolet rays
Got it, but why sky, even?
The sky, close to me. Near you, these, the masters of the birds.
Tell me, are they after your own heart?
Their peacocks are a matter of peace.
What are you saying? Are there no other birds in the world of peace?
What about doves? There are doves!
The doves have become old.
Do you know what we call ‘old’?
The aged black wood of the window will call you grandson
The new-age chandelier will call you great-grandson
Breathing heavily from both nostrils filled with cobwebs
The swing hanging from the wall will declare:
Come on in, sonny boy, sit you down!
Like an old house, the dove, too, is a spent bird.
Didn’t I often tell you, between you and me let there be a
Spontaneous peacock
At least once!
That’s no longer possible.
Didn’t I say, that’s the noble remedy in the direction of sunrise!
The paintbrush copied me a blue waterfowl.
No, blue isn’t blue in all cases—ability is colourless.
Remember? Of course you know him
The ravager of wind and wing, desireless flame!
The resolute pencil accepted the poison eagerly, on its own.
Thirsting hot iron dies as it reaches your lips
Forgets the ocean of creation
That college-going aunt who in her adolescent past
Tenderly simmered lofty love-and-blessings blood-red—
She wasted her words on me. In seas rivers pitchers
Pots glasses sweet salt
That word I’m drinking, shouldn’t I think about it?
What I’m thinking is curiosity—show me show me
What you’re copying into your ex’cise book
They don’t show me a thing, the two of them like twins
Simply pull the sheet over their heads…
Providence sees my whirling
Providence was mighty amazed at my whirling
Believed I would arrive at the water well in time
Those days are gone, siree
Everyone says:
Don’t go away without hearing the end!
Says: Come on, let’s go to pasture to understand grass
Says: Oh look-look, see those tumultuous young girls
Paintbrush young girls cuddling kitty-cats
Turning turtle in rippling waves
Everyone says: I won’t do it again
Refute all fault, priest
Everyone says: I got nothing from life
I’m a desert I’m a dromedary
So much noise, my love, so much noise
Hiding below the piled-up noise
His life in his hands, he sits down, Mr Rainbow Himself— lightning!
Such a thunderbolt—today he curled up into such a tiny centipede.
Therefore, from today
I become the overseer of stealing and eating another’s food!
Every day at dawn poison at the root of austerity
The one who climbs into the sky
East of the mountain from which the sun rises
Her face half-burnt by acid
Day comes home from field upon field
Picking up the nests of returning birds
Such clambering high, leaning on the branches of evening
Such stringing of the moon chain-link by chain-link
Hour upon hour the swinging of the bell
After sounding it for enthusiasm, filled with restless winds
That relationship flies off, becomes a paper bag
Even the evening knows no acquittal, keeps showing up at your doorstep
Fear like the light of day
In a distant trench what burns is mere play
What floats in the upper sky—mere trees
What falls into the vast vessel of a dark plateau
Mere stars
They fall, they melt
In this poem all meanings merge with the unknown moon
Does the sky go bad once it’s written?
Language for the sake of any language
Is my thief, and I her thievery
All I ask is that you make me a gold coin, break me normally
Come on, be like birth, one blow of the blacksmith’s hammer!
Fear and courage are clearly one’s own
O End, O Chief of Absolute Shadow
Your tomfoolery is the last drag of dope on a dead river
Whatever else happens
I won’t roam the streets as a madman
Plenty of sights will still be strewn around in the fields
The days will be so perceptible. Gathering so many amazements
Tossing up ash
From so much burning
Breaking and remaking my destiny with my own two hands of my own free will
Lounging around on the warm red sea of sand
I will live on for so many more days
Copying so many hundred suns
Just as long as it takes for the dream to come
51
Having mesmerized meditation
A newly awakened soul simply comes and stands in the water
Leaving old peacocks behind, liberation goes far into the untimely hours
What remains is the strain of flying
The entire infinite just descended into this palm
Let me raise my hand a little
The sun hidden under slips of straw!
53
A crow flew away from my life
Its coronet said: ‘Where’ll I go?’
The crow’s coronet!
True, that’s not at all complicated.
Who will give me such a tip?
Hearing this, the girl said:
‘In your left arm your right arm chest back legs
How many hundreds of tunnels inside you
Round the clock the blood races through them like a howling wind
Try floating the crow there.’
Since then all night thousands of dead birds
Rise and fall and rise at the speed of blood and unexpectedly
Murder goes to my head…
Poetry blazes twice over
55
What divine weed!
And what a trip—pure Shiva!
Now at last to live more than live
The sky framed in many guineas
One shake and they jingle-jangle down
The last of the highest hopes fear just the fear of falling
Hundreds of acquaintances but who
Will you grab to save the sea?
The greatest of prizes in the newest room in the house
This mat at low-tide. Lower body wet with sand.
Coming down isn’t a downer anymore.
From your seated body let blazing rockets rip through
The crown of your head from one sleep-shrouded town to the next
And you—my Shiva, my high—stay unknowable!
Afterword
This book was written by the window. The window at dawn in my fourth-floor room. The window at midnight. Gusts of hot air blowing through the afternoon window of a racing E-1 bus.
Waking up very early, the lines that came into my mind in my eyes-still-shut state—lines inextricable from birdcalls— then again, getting down speedily from the bus, writing a few lines down while sitting or standing under a tree if I found a tree, a tea-stall if I found a tea-stall, that’s a kind of window too.
In such a way, this book.
All kinds of colours came floating around this book. I don’t know how. I would be lying down in my darkened room around midnight, and in the sky at the window there appeared the Chennai seascape, where I had seen both the day and the sea come to an end together. Three years ago, from the duskcoloured water of the horizon a hazy smoky ship was rising. On the other side of the sandbank, it was as if the spotless white of Mr Cloud’s dhuti-shirt was waving its flag. It was like a waking-dream, sometimes from the cover of the book Nausea on my table, Dali’s blue, and from far away a dot, the faint shadow of a flying bird. Shuvaprasanna’s crow never calls out but what are its long beak and its round gaze if not the call of the colour black. Sometimes a tiger from space has leapt over the supine nude woman lying wide awake on a bed of stone in the middle of the ocean, and it is still falling for an eternity because the void between the tiger and the sleeping nude is never-ending—but the sea that is spread below them both, that sea too is impossibly blue! A print of this very painting by Dali has been hanging on the wall of my room for the last five years.
