I wonder why airports have
Such enormous glass walls.
As if the sky must be seen
In all its might before it is conquered.
As if this overwhelming blue
Must ultimately be mastered.
And the heavens undeterred
Allow us to think it true
That when we are enfolded
Embraced and blue-golded
It is we that rose and flew.
Author: Giti
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In Gratitude to April Wayfarers
A month of poems ends
With a day dedicated to labour.
A month that began
With a day dedicated to Fools.
Therein lies, perhaps, a metaphor
Requiring another set of tools.
Yeats’s hammer, pummelling thoughts
Into unity; Eliot’s chisel, moulding
Images from handfuls of dust.
The spade of James Wright, folding
Epiphanies into the earth’s crust.
Old Bill’s tarp stretched over our heads
To catch over weaning ambition;
Ghalib and Faiz, Ludhianvi and Mira
Solder and weld the self and creation.
But of all the names and works of hands
Those of you, all banded here
Are closest to the bone. You stand
Together and walk the way
From All Fools to Labour Day.
(April is, of course, National Poetry Writing Month. This poem is dedicated to all the fellow bloggers on Daily Riyaaz who wrote together through April.)
Tiger, Tiger
And then they shot the tigers. It defeats
Me how those who earned their stripes
Stripping the Sultan of his jewels and rings
Carried their greed for carrion and ripe
Red rubies to the cages. In the heat
Of the battle, they did not forget to bring
Home his sword with the tiger hilt;
Kept his tiger throne. The empire built
On death and plunder, cannot cheat
Me of the astounded wonder, at this thing
– I cannot name it, it baffles me –
That moved an army that killed a country
For its jewels, just like the unnamed soldier
Who killed Tipu for his, crowned its glory
By killing the Sultan’s six tigers. Bolder
Poets than I have battled with history
Finding rhyme, if not reason. Did they see
What Blake did, burning bright
In those striped lords of war? What
Did they go and kill them for?
(Tipu Sultan was killed in battle by an anonymous soldier for his precious ornaments. After the generals found his body, they took over his fort – and killed his 6 tigers.)
The Letter and the Spirit
If not in letters, how else to catch
The spirit? If not in the slant
Of the hand, the dip and scratch
Of the pen, where other than
In the blotted and erased,
Is the reach of mind to mind,
Day to day, caught? If not
In boxes, how else to trap
Those years and longings,
Every secret in every scrap
With ‘Par Avion’, ‘Inland Mail’,
‘Personal’ and ‘Confidential’,
With stamps across the seas and
Seals with dates and details.
How urgently each sheet lays bare
Its need to breathe with, to share.
Love Poem
When we came out it was nearly eleven
There was still light in the sky
We found names for all the blues, seven
Shades between colour and hue
And how the ocean shone with the light
As if it glowed from within, dry
Fire burning like a secret heart, bright
As the lighthouse beam, turning and turning
Lighting the way home. And you
And I, Seeing ourselves outlined
In still black, against the churning
Always forever, always new.
“And all ye need to know”
Glass against glass set against the light
Of sharp winter suns on weary northern nights
Blinding as an interrogation too tired to resist
Answers that crash and burn like lies
But persist, behind the hand that shades the eyes.
There are always other resources
Than seeing as we must. Glasses to glasses
Trust to trust. Close your eyes, lower the blinds
Trust that each ray will bend and find
A transmuted beauty, a glory of glow
That’s enough for the night, sufficient to know.
Petitions
Governments are so often
Like blossoming pear trees.
I learnt this when I stood
One silent white summer
And thought of James Wright.
“Perfect, beyond my reach,
How I envy you.” he wrote.
“For if you could only listen,
I would tell you something,
Something human.” It smote
My just cause into dust. Trusting,
The petitioner stands, missing,
Often, the point of her own protest.
The government is not Yeats’s
“Great rooted blossomer”. The jest
Is on the trees, when you learn
That it is the heat, not the shade,
That frees.
Chapter 13: The Third Witch (from The Bones of Stars)
Chapter 13: The Third Witch
Adit gripped Ethan’s hand in his, wondering whether his grin signaled happiness at having cracked a good joke or joy at being, in fact, a witch. Finding no clue in the frank blue gaze, he settled for – “Shouldn’t that be ‘wizard’?”
“Warlock, actually”, smiled the tall blond witch. This left Adit no wiser as to whether he was serious or joking, but Hsimah had no such doubts.
“Ah. The third. But naturally.” He inclined his head in Ethan’s direction. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“Yo.”
Yvonne groaned dramatically, sighed and heaved herself out of the depths of the sofa. “Yo. The boy says ‘Yo’! We dress him up, we take him out, and this is how he behaves, the wretched, wretched boy!” She pummeled him on his stout upper arm in despair. He caught her shoulders in a one-armed clasp and mussed her hair with a large hand.
“She loves me,” he told Adit and Hsimah confidentially. Yvonne hrrumphed. They all stood about while an awkward silence descended on the group. Adit looking from one to the other, Hsimah eyeing the three others speculatively, Yvonne pouting, Hyun worried, Ethan beaming from ear to ear. Finally, Hsimah cleared his throat as prelude to speaking. Everyone turned to him.
“So. Three witches. A full coven.”
Ethan reached over and pulled Hyun into his other arm. Then he looked Hsimah in the eye and nodded once. “Aye, Sir.” He managed to appear protective, bashful and proud all at once. Hsimah held his eye for a while. Then he inclined his head in silent acknowledgment. Adit watched this exchange carefully. Clearly some sort of understanding had been reached between the two men that escaped him for the moment. He cleared his throat.
“So are you three really witches? What is a coven? And how can it help me find Akshat?” The flat tone in which the three questions were delivered alerted everyone to the fact that he was beginning to lose his patience; in fact, he was very close to losing his mind. He was almost sure that coming here with Yvonne had been a huge mistake. So far, nothing of great importance had been revealed, no-one had suggested even one course of action towards finding his brother and now here was this tall blond man claiming to be a witch! What was a witch, anyway? Adit and Akshat had stopped reading fiction at age 9 when they discovered that it was not fact. They were not, unlike many of their friends, raised on a diet of fantasy and magic and had trouble identifying heroes and heroines of popular fiction that their peers referred to by first names. Nevertheless, the past few months had certainly brought home to the twins the existence of things they would earlier have firmly labeled ‘fiction’ – and ‘fantasy’ at that. Still, it was one thing to accept your own and your family’s powers, and quite another to find witches in America: where they had specifically been sent to get away from the all that.
Hyun shrieked and broke free from Ethan’s hold. She raced across the room straight towards Adit. Astonished, he stepped out of her way just as she hurtled past him screaming ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod. She threw herself into a chair in front of the laptop in the middle, tapping keys furiously. Numbers and images flew over the screen in a blur. She muttered under her breath, gasping and putting her hand to her mouth as her eyes followed the blurs at lightning speed. Utterly baffled, the room full of people gaped at her trying to track her arms as they snapped from laptop to laptop, the fingers clicking on the keys in a non-stop clatter. Suddenly she reached over, pressed a key and whirled about to face them all.
“See!” The command snapped all eyes to the laptop her slender arm pointed at.
Like a Bridge
What need of bridges, when waters
Are not troubled. When clear and calm
They lie in invitation to walkers
Of oceans, seas of glass, smooth
Reflections of feet, cool as balm.
What need of bridges when fear
Is a friend to float with, truth
In her face, cupped by the fjord,
Whose ripples touch your arm
In gentle laughter. What need
Of bridges, when the white slopes
Know that your drowned heart breathes
In so many crossings over, hopes
Of births while grieving deaths.
What need of bridges, when wonder
Holds the two shores asunder.
On First Discovering Pavarotti’s “Che faro…”
Orpheus, barred from Hades,
Like the lament of angels,
Or Euridice herself, where indeed
Could he go. Unmanned, unvoiced,
Unsaved by Death’s refusal, where
Indeed, without his love, without
Her song, when yearning has her
By the throat. Turn around, turn about,
Where else, indeed, with eyes for
Only her, blind, following only
The longing for her behind him,
How but to call in her own voice
How but in her own could she find him.
(Orpheus’s role is traditionally sing by an Alto, a woman’s voice)
Giti Chandra 