Between sky and pain
Shot down by grief
Only to rise again
Gravity’s thief.
A miracle of pull
And tug, the heart
Flies on full only
To fly apart.
Category: poetry
My Niece the Slam Poet
When you were little – very very little –
I would turn your pajamaed feet up
Bump them with my nose until
You squeaked. In protest, amusement,
Annoyance, recusement,
Who knows.
When you were a little less little,
You would stand over my newborn
And earnestly lecture her by the hour.
Don’t listen to anyone, I heard you say once,
You just do whatever you want.
A little more less little, and stories dropped
From you like the monsoons, drenching
Us all in a deluge of images, floods of plots.
Then you became not little at all.
And we waited for the words to fall.
But they clung to the paper on which you left them
Swaddled in sheets, jealous to be found.
And here you are, with such a big voice
And me, speechless, at this thundering sound.
(Inspired by Ananya Pandey, a real life poet, who is also a super hero in The Book of Guardians Series)
Blue Walls
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.
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.
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.
Giti Chandra 