Axis & Allies
(AA) Canto 72: Commedia
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One may gladly admit that the essential & undefinable quality that we call poetry, the quality of being poetical, is one of the eternal things in life. There is something in Homer & the Book of Job which cannot be superseded, any more than the beauty of a spring morning or the sea or a mother’s love for a child can be superseded
Gilbert Murray
Invocations
sometimes I talk in my sleep
funny how unconscious
I’m at my most awake
Megan Mccorquodale
I sat alone singing the Song of Man,
When every beating heart swam through mine own,
A swirl of swans sang in the summer’s van
& I, a sentinel on Zeus’s throne;
His vast robe flows
Before me like a flame,
As lovely as the rose Persophone became.
Strange lights & stranger sounds rang out
Above the global babble,
My spirit turning inside out,
The mage in me must dabble,
Assuaging all my deep-felt doubt,
‘Rise up from the rabble,’
& hope beyond all hope my soul may pass
The last oppression of the poet-class!
This is no simple shepherd’s song
Once sung in Sicily,
For right or wrong we bards belong
In stranger company,
Sat at the feet of godhead, pledg’d before infinity.
Mount Olympus
Poetic Meeting
Now (turned into a Man under obscure measures),
I feel within me the germs of future existences,
lives that shall rise and soar to find higher reaches
Juan Ramón Molina
Rose, from Poppi’s fields, enchanting accent,
“Dante Alighieri is my name,
Sent to attend poetical descent
Into the ovens of infernal flame!”
“Let it be so,
Let us retrace the ride
That was thine Inferno, when Virgil was thy guide.”
“Poet, thy path we have observ’d
From heavenly echelons,
How thro’ thy task ye have conserv’d
Man’s Wars & his raw weapons,
How ye wonder’d what hells reserv’d
For man’s evil actions –
For questions to be illuminated,
My mortal form here rejuvenated.”
The poet led me from the peak
Tho’ all seem’d in my mind –
Forest of teak, bent branches creak
Before us & behind,
Until we reach Hell’s opening by devil’s art design’d.
Ploutonion
Gates of Hell
lord lord
I have sinned and I confess it
but it isn’t really all my fault
Emmanuel Boundzéki Dongala
‘ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE,’
Dante trembl’d once more before the gloom,
Then to nook-smitten depths did dissapear,
I join’d him as a robber stalks a tomb;
As deep distance
Echoes a frightful sound,
Sonambulants advance cautiously underground.
“Pray, Dante, stray not far from me,
As into Hades we go,”
Soon rose lung-black cacophony,
Emmuted groans of limbo,
By Acheron, glutting vile sea,
In stagnant, livid flow,
Where Charon waits to ferry fools & kings,
His haunted face bloated with hornet stings.
With old proverbs our pilot paid,
Who blinkless gave no thanks,
But silent stay’d, the boat obey’d,
Sliding tween fetid banks,
Scudding beside a sorry shore, rats scuttling on the planks.
First Circle of Hell
Ancyent Wisdom
Pardon will he obtain, who will call upon
God, and despise Him not,
And heaven the night he dies
St Eleath
Girdling circles of this infernal world
Spiral before us to a point unknown,
Thro womby vaultages shriek’d anguish swirl’d,
Like spinning pennies grating round a cone;
Souls shriek terror,
An angry nest of thieves,
Joyous, once, with honour now forced to fend for leaves.
Round stinkweed shrub a scrum did break,
Won by some toothless hoodlum,
Who gorged it down like it was steak –
Hermann Goering look’d on glum,
Who once had made Albion quake,
Turn’d London to a slum –
Now forced to bear, thro an eternal gloom,
Asthma, marasmus, spasm, qualm & rheum.
A whistle separates the drones,
Imps whip them back to work
Breaking great stones with vulture bones,
Sulphur stings those that shirk,
“Let’s deeper dive,” said Dante’s shade, & led me thro’ the murk.
Molbolgia
Eternal Tortures
O Lord, I am submitting myself to you
I am entangled in these worldly bonds
I am attracted by Karma & its consequences
Krishnamacharya
Encountering the last few laps of Hell
We improvis’d steep course thro’ Caina,
Our eyes upon a dreary vision fell,
Pale-faced & shrunk in weary demeanour;
Some demon shade,
Its eye-pits flicking flame,
Clutch’d tight a crooked blade… Herr Hitler was his name.
“He was placed so close to evil,
With the sins of treachery,
Those high sinners of the Devil
Who betray their own country
& in its destruction revel,”
There for eternity,
Hounded by hosts of hungry mosquitoes,
He was condemn’d to dwell on all his woes.
“Now we are done here,” Dante said,
Let us start ascending,
Foul phantoms fed our clammy dread
Til the stairwell’s ending,
On mortal earth, where further climb’d rainbow roads upwending.
Purgatory
Pearly Gates
I wrote on the rocks & on the waves of the sea
Your name, my Beloved,
But the winds erased what I had written
Abu Firas
A golden staircase in our hearts appears,
& so uprose we to those realms of bliss,
A stunning clock of seven spinning spheres,
The perfect paradise that Heaven is;
Where waits one soul,
My eternal Grandma,
Who shunn’d the mortal fall for Jimmy God’s lodestar.
“My son, tho’ ye are far away,
From low troubles upon earth,
I still recall the special day
Heaven calls your day of birth,
& daily for your safety pray
Beside the astral tirth,
To see you up in Heaven makes me proud…”
Her sweet voice falls, her face cover’d by cloud.
I watch’d her fading with a pang
& whisper’d true yikor,
The angels sang, their fanfares rang,
But still I wanted more…
“Go on my child,” her voice was mild, grief lifted from my core.
Ring of Lesser Spheres
Heavenly Passage
I had no beginning & I shall have
no end : the beam of light
stretches out before & behind
Ron Padgett
Light illimitable thrusts in plenitude,
The extravagant rising of a star,
All minds on earth sophisticate & crude
Awaken to the worlds these rays unbar;
Archangel stands
On battle cairn of bones,
Pearl pibroch in his hands straining the noble tones.
Souls join’d him in his lofty song,
Triumphant in harmony,
Exalted voices deep & strong,
Charlemagne & Duke Godfrey
But two cantari in that throng
Of dashing chivalry,
The music of the soldiers of the cross,
Lamentation-tinged for their war-gods loss.
Now the long page of peace begun
& legends live namore,
Thro’ gore & gun our world wars won,
Wisdom sent to the fore,
When modern human automons may only read of war.
Ring of Mars
Epic Vistas
The bud
stands for all things
even for those things that don’t flower
Galway Kinnel
Like Burnley men when misty Pendle clears,
Fresh vistas spread, each vein’s fibres tingl’d,
Symphonious, the planetary spheres,
Mazy in a spangling motion mingl’d;
The Righteous blurr’d,
Merging as solid gold,
Spelling the holy word in splendours manifold.
‘DILIGITE JUSTITIAM.’
Forms upon the firmament,
Then, ‘QUI JUDIATIS TERRAM,’
Spread across the starry tent,
Yet other phrases praise the Lamb,
We watch’d them all silent,
& yet, our souls were singing in concord
To this lovely libretto of the Lord.
“Now,” serves Dante, “Our paths must part,
This time together flown,
Before ye start open thy heart
& turn thy sins to stone,”
Then with a smile he join’d his kin & left me there alone.
Ring of Jupiter
Circle of Fixed Stars
On its helm, seen far away,
A planet, like the Morning’s, lay;
And those plumes its light rain’d through
Percy Bysshe Shelley
I climb’d up to a pearly battlement,
Mocking all human art, menhir fortress,
With stars & planets circumambient,
I saw Christ on his triumphal progress;
Saintly nation,
Forming translucent flame,
Gracious congregation chaunting their saviour’s name.
I tip-toed thro’ those holy halls
Upon a course collision,
Portraits of saints hung from the walls,
“Forgive my imposition…”
Jove’s gloriousness awenthralls,
O! Beatific vision!
That bathes my senses to my unclos’d core,
As now I write can recollect no more!
I woke up with rose-wreathed crown
Gliding by angel wing,
She set me down above the town
Upon a mountain king,
Then soar’d thro’ sky, shrinking to raven, thrush, fly, then… nothing.
Mount Olympus
(AA) Gl’Immortali VIII
An eye for an eye blinds the world
Ghandi
Passing the Trial
But I shall not compare today with yesterday.
We, people, can get used to everything.
But the battlefield was too terrible
Konstantin Simonov
On the solitude of a mountain slope,
Silent but for the buzzing of a fly,
Fair Gwyddion is fill’d with fresher hope
Watching the vapours vanish from the sky;
The beast was gone
The cause of all his woes
Altho’ the wars were done gulf-tide of sadness flows.
Down the mountain tall bounds leading
Went the great god of the Celts
T’where Oxslip & Love-lies-bleeding
Intermingled with wolf pelts,
By the Golgoth grass receding
Demeanour nobly melts,
Wailing a wylde wail with a doleful sound,
Here INNOCENCE lies dead within a mound.
Britannia potter’d solemnly
Thro’ dew-drench’d bluebell wood
T’where Liberty had carved a tree
With names of famous good,
Supping the toasts of heroes from a cup of Vishnu’s blood.
Albion
Faerie Exodus
Where is her light? her crown? her ornaments?
Her chain of love? her peace? her puritie?
Her fruitfull gardens? her fair continents?
Sir William Mure
The realm of the immortal quiet grows
A first few weeds have climb’d into the scene
From Europe’s plains to Asgard’s tumbling snows
It seem’d like the great battle had not been,
But for the pyre
Lit by the firefly,
Where Toutatis & Tyr make ashes in the sky.
Sprinkling upon the faerie way
Her procession fell silent
What once was floral turns to grey
& the trees lay bare & bent
They come at last to this cold bay
No longer innocent
Where in the wake of ravaging excess
They boarded barges for the exodus
& left with tender memories
Of ruby Europa
Her energies, her soft beauties
& her blessed nature
Yes left for safer gardens, both far off & forever…
Oceania
Second Coming
Our cup is fill’d with doings fell;
Provoking in a rage of hell
Bless’d God the Highest
John MacCodrum
Now at the time that was before agreed,
The Gods assembl’d all on Arlo Hill,
& at their heart, upon a jasper steed,
Jove sat resipiscent in silence still;
His daughter rides
Upon the divine lap
As angel army glides, marching to thunderclap.
“My new saviour,” said Jove, “Shall free
The virtue of Orlando,
Agamemnon’s nobility,
The goodness of Godfredo,
Bare Gloriana’s chastity,
Ethics of Rinaldo,
Like Aeneas adventure overseas
With the persistence of bold Ulysses.”
From heavenly hyacinthine
Saffia descended,
The sacred queen of all that’s been,
Beauties never ended,
Not knowing that our Universe on her worth depended.
Midgard
Balrog’s Legacy
The padre’s voice had scarcely ceased from prayer
When distant rounds of cheering tore the air;
Wild, yet harmonious; then loud song burst forth
Anna Durie
Long-horn hastily mounts his vampyre steed
Replenish’d of it’s stock of scarlet fuel,
“Satanus, I shall help you as agreed,”
& gave his friend that crackling, azure jewel;
Then giddiyupp’d
Beyond the halls of Hell,
To violently erupt by Midgard’s cloudy swell;
Then shooting thro’ the stratosphere,
Summer twinkling with all stars,
Satanus watch’d them disappear,
Slouch’d ‘hind adamantine bars,
Stroking his technologic gear,
Aid for his future wars,
Push’d diamonds in its sockets for to glean
Secrets mysterious filling the screen.
Grey Tepig passes Jupiter
Uranus & Pluto,
Her warrior, her passenger,
Hauls reigns… as she did slow
Balrog back-glances on a dancing planet’s blue-green glow!
Space
End of War
There shall be peace forever between these people
Zeus, the allseeing met with destiny to confirm it
Singing all follow our footsteps
Aeschylus
War, the province of kings to bring about
But the duty of the gods to end it,
Is married to Peace, but Peace has a doubt,
If life wed together, how to spend it?
Mere words suffice,
The wisdom of an elf,
“By War’s great sacrifice the world redeems itself!”
As seraph-wingéd Victory
Sails over Asgard seas
Heaven woke in vernal beauty
Blossoming with birds & bees,
Where Thor’s maturing son, Modi,
Projects from his knees,
Arms rais’d, promising his father’s father
We shall be wise, always & forever.
Britannia strode thro’ countryside,
Paus’d by the Bluebell Wood;
There, sudden, cried, for all that died,
Remembering the Good –
Swore to praise their martyrdoms with monoliths & sainthood.
Albion
Judgement of Jupiter
My God! I will address Thee
In loudest hymns of praise;
Then, too, my soul shall bless Thee
Synyesius
Jove reach’d the ruins of a city lost
Long times ago, when Mars was in his prime,
Calling for Jupiter his echoes toss’d
That name thro’ temples in a mono-rhyme;
Some ghostly shade
By faith namore sustain’d,
Slouch’d humbl’d & afraid, by ev’ry breath bepain’d.
“Old god,” spoke Jove, “Look in these eyes,
Tho’ your body crippl’d, weak,
Your mind still prospers very wise,
I’ve travel’d to hear ye speak,
Of better lives we phantasize,
Of finer age we seek,”
The old god thought awhile, & then did say,
“Bring Mars to trial, then fling him leagues away.”
“Wise words,” mused Jove, “My thanks, old friend,”
The great God out-thrust palm,
That did suspend, Rome’s best legend
Hard-grabs instead his arm,
& squeez’d it tight, “Put him some place he’ll never do us harm!”
Olympus
Heavenly Judgement
Lord of the world, He reigned alone
While yet the universe was naught.
When by His will all things were wrought
Solomon Ibn Gabriol
Jove greets the Gods, campus-stella seated,
On deathless islands spinning round his own,
Mars stood there, dejected & defeated,
Tied to white rocks in front of Heaven’s throne;
The trial begins,
The Prosecution starts,
Listing a bunch of sins & crunching juror’s hearts.
“But need we him,” springs Liberty,
“When tyranny uprising,”
“Surely not,” sings Saraswathi,
“Warfare aids each tyrant king,”
“Let him keep his divinity,”
Offer Buck$ & St£rling,
“I disagree,” groans greying Gwyddion,
“Hough! Look at what his presence here hath done!”
After the Gods had rais’d their voice
A show of hands was sought,
Angels rejoice! O happy choice!
“Guilty!” proclaims the court,
As, gurgling on congealing blood, “NOOooooo!!….” roars from War’s raw throat.
Empyrean
Imprison’d
The crood streams flowed at happy pace,
A couthy look on ilka face ;
Thinks I the warld’s a nae ill place
Elsie Rae
With Jove’s archangels hovering above,
Mars was allow’d to kiss his last goodbyes,
Thro’ bloodshot eyes Venus would beam her love
As he was led beyond her thro the skies;
Deep into space
Universal frontiers,
Where sable pits replace the suppermassive spheres;
They found an ancyent galaxy
Where supernovae flashes
Implode in awesome density
& turn diamonds to ashes,
They cast Mars to that gravity –
“Tho he yells & thrashes
He will never be able to escape
To fill us with killing, pillage & rape,”
Said Mab, sipping her herbal mead
Of soft-scented flowers,
KARMA agreed with quaint, “Indeed,”
Age of Aquarius
Enters the harbour of the world, a bay so beauteous.
Shangri-La
War’s Futility
I got used to missing you
You came back after a long time
I now love longing for you more than I love you
Aziz Nesin
We are all planets to a greater star,
These stars subservant to a further force,
Balrog, at last, returns to his own war,
Dadghab-at-arms tethers his feather’d horse;
Shock & relief
Swept thro’ his regiment,
Whose chieftans shall debrief this errant lieutenant.
Says Balrog, “I have seen a sphere
Not worth our recognition…”
“Then come,” says Gen’ral Balthazeer,
“There is a vital mission,
The armies of the Usgoth near
Marching in precision,
We press on ye the need to make attack,
To win the day & fling these rascals back!”
Our mighty Balrog join’d a horde
Of dashing cavalry,
With plasma-sword, with purpose, pour’d
Into an enemy,
To be soon slain… from war’s cruel pain tragedy comes only.
Dadghabbi
(AA) Canto 73: Childe India
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The poet is like the prince of the clouds,
Who haunts the tempest & mocks the archer;
Exiled on the earth in the midst of derision
His giant wings keep him from walking
Baudelaire
Second Wind
the blackbird sings to him, brother, brother,
if this be the last song you shall sing
sing well, for you may not sing another
Julian Grenfell
I had assumed my quillerie was done…
My soul exhumes th’electric, triptych train
& in a half-light Nostradamian
Projects through time, I shall to thee again,
Muse of my life
When wedded with all this
Thou art the waspen knife embedded in my bliss.
I took a walk round Whittinghame
On an early summer’s day,
When bees about wild garlic hum
Gorse engolden in god’s sway,
Hearing a faerie kettledrum
Beat yonder house crow-grey,
Where Balfour read Plato before Israel,
Sensing I had to finish yet my tale.
I clambour thro’ thick thornbush throng,
Veins pierc’d by splinter-pin,
Not sucking tongue, nor needle long,
Could pluck it from within,
That itch, y’know, that can’t be scratch’d that’s just beneath the skin.
East Lothian
August
2008
Departures
Oh, I got tired of the northern sun,
Of white anxious ghost-like faces,
Of crouching over heatless fires
Abioseh Nicol
Accompanied by Apollonians,
O mystic ladies of these sentences!
Gallivanting from the Europeans
& these coetanian acquaintances;
For India,
In silence, did I fly,
Musing poesia beneath a breathless sky.
About us atmospherics wailed
Of a gamesome energy,
& I, a Wellesley, as we sail’d
Startling barques of destiny
Beyond Iraq… beneath me paled
The Sea of Araby,
As Byron rode to Ali Pasha’s feast,
Yes! Yes! I was a poet in the East.
As Wellington stood at Assaye
I stept out of the plane
& met Bombay, a cloudless day
Far sultrier than Spain,
Raj fanning all before me like the wisdom of the Jain.
Mumbai
September
2008
Bombay
I’ll never change myself to gold.
Other fools that want can make
themselves into big-chested bulls
Bassus
We stand at the gateway to India,
Grand sentinel arch of Britannia’s stream
About us the swirl of Bon Bohia,
Thou seven-islanded mercantile dream;
All senses drown’d
In native hue & cry,
We swathe thro’ sight & sound sweat-streaming, lips parch’d dry.
In tortured droves the Hindu pours
From Pakistan’s cruel Koran,
Where VT’s gothic gargoyles rose
Oer many a fam’ly man,
No rooms, no work, no peace, no laws,
No pity & no plan –
Would all those men who plying Empire’s vision
Could see the suff’rance at its partition.
Squalid, one-room’d, tarpaulin lives
Smile at me thro’ the glass,
Human beehives; men, spawn & wives
E’er buzzing as we pass
Identical, dark shanty streets choked with the underclass.
Dharavi
September
2008
Nandi Hills
Tell me, sir.
Have you ever heard
A peacock sing?
Suzy Kassem
The plateaux of the Deccan beckons me,
Pepper’d with arcane & boldering hills,
Balance acts defying rock gravity,
Where, checking the architectural skills
Of Cornwallis,
Ascend, I, heap’d up mound
Of earth to find there is Heaven on this high ground.
When Tipoo Sultan cameto stay
The trees flock’d full of bunting.
With fat-fac’d guests, by light of day,
Would trawl the slopes a-hunting,
Where pheasants soon no longer gay
&, as boars ceas’d grunting,
Abundant India kick’d into gear
& slopes would be restock’d within the year!
The Horticulture Minister,
Hands clutching pad & pens,
Descends by the brown banister,
A gaggle of men-hens
Around him, fussy following, all of his whys & whens.
Karnataka
September
2008
Madras
So Gods eternall bounty ever shin’d
The beames of beeing, moving, life, sence, minde,
& to all things him selfe communicated
William Alabaster
My driver sure don’t know the highway code,
Thro vast, suburban, lawless sprawl haring,
Thirty kilometres of ribbon road,
Shops, neon signs & chi stalls commingling;
A diff’rent class
Of Indian City,
Formally Queen Madras, maid of an English sea.
Into the caves of Mylapore
Hot blood gusht from the doubter,
Dragging himself across the floor…
Savage loin-cladded hunter
Hath thrust a spear into his core…
Whispering last prayer
He saw the sweet beatific & he cried,
“Thou art fulfill’d…” the martyr smiled & died.
By Fort Saint George such church stands tall
As English as the Downs,
On sacred wall writ the roll call
Of heroes & of towns,
When London’s lackeys grappl’d with & toppl’d Hindu crowns.
Chennai
October
2008
Andaman
I asked for
this primitive afternoon
away from it all
Richard Allen Taylor
I dawdl’d four days on the Nancowry,
Small taster of the voyages of yore,
Fodder’d on a bland, suspicious thali,
My heart leapt up to see Hanuman’s shore;
Some deep & sheer
Mountain range submarine
Thrusting it’s summits clear in shades of leafy green.
The cellular jail built to last
Thro good ol’ British know how,
Where Freedom Fighters earn repast,
Some colonial Dachau,
Where bull whips crack’d & rough sticks flash’d
Guantanaman know-how
A place where proud blood flows for liberty…
How could my contree build Kalapani?
I took a boat to Ross island
Across clear water’d bay,
Wylde Banyans stand on buildings grand,
Imperious Pompeii,
Where now the White Man’s Burden is a ghost town in decay.
Port Blair
October
2008
Bengal Bay
I love, O, how I love to ride
On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,
When every mad wave drowns the moon
Barry Cornwall
We sail’d from the comforts of Port Blair
Into the wide-wave level loveliness,
We men have conquer’d mountains, moats & air,
But never on deep ocean made impress;
We watch’d the fins
Of silver fish skimming
Where flipp’d slick-back Dolphins ribbon’d in star-swimming.
Empiric British ambition
Found a human pulse in Clive,
Whose self-righteous indignation
Blazed triumphant to arrive
& address the situation
Within this Nawab’s hive,
His tiny fleet transporting all his boys,
These royal redcoats & loyal sepoys.
We sighted land on the fourth day,
Sunder’d by a river,
Naiad gateway to the wide way
Of th’AryaVarta –
I have travers’d from South to North via the Nirvana!
Hugli
October
2008
Colonial
News from a forrein Country came,
As if my Treasure & my Wealth lay there;
So much it did my Heart Enflame !
Thomas Traherne
Akbar’s passengers rush from the harbour,
Haul’d by rickshaw thro’ wacky racer streets,
Power’d by pedal, petrol or runner,
Til once again the Western posse meets
Mid Sudder’s share
Of the Imperatrix
I felt without a care, bouy´d up by British bricks.
Magnificent Pax Mughala
Declines into decadence,
The Nawab, Siraj-ud-Daula
Grows in scope & confidence,
His army march’d to Kolkatta
& English arrogance –
Abandon’d, but for those too late to leave…
Slamm’d in the hole…dawn breaks…few left to breathe.
Grand ocean of humanity,
Sea of friendly faces,
From to native tea, & black taxi,
Betting down the races,
An excellent community garnished with English graces.
Calcutta
October
2008
Forgotten Fields
I see it as I leave the inn
The dark of night, an evil djinn
Pursues me close, each step I take
Fadhil Al-Azzawi
Life simple mid familiar surrounds,
But senses of adventure grow depress’d
So I set forth, a hunter with the hounds,
In pursuit of another interest;
Some battlefield
Lies died for to the North,
If feeling it shall yield a call may be of worth.
All in this monsoon of Indra’s
Growl the scowling guns of France,
By rhino shields & scimitars
Howdah’d behemoths advance…
Rudely halted by Clive’s soldiers!
Mir Jaffa sees the chance,
His mass of decision led from the field,
This treachery the Nawabcy must yield.
My cycle rickshaw gliding hies
From the glean of battle,
A poets prize…dark dragonflies
Dart oer the arable –
My guide plants me on northbound bus roaring at full throttle!
Plassey
October
2008
(AA) Canto 74: Subcontinental
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There is no more absorbing story than that of the discovery & interpretation of India by western consciousness
Mircia Eliade
Bus Crash
I think about the moments
Moments I dread
Moments I can’t seem to forget
Muhammad Afzal
I awoke in a strange, white-sheeted bed,
Fellow passengers moaning in sev’ral ways,
Soak’d in blood & clutching a concuss’d head
I stumb’ld to a taxi in a daze!
“Driver, just drive!”
I fled that hospital
Lucky to be alive, the crash had been fatal.
Why am I in a strange white bed,
Woke by moans? to my amaze,
Bags lying by my concuss’d head,
Stumbling out in blood-soak’d haze,
In old, odd rickshaw off I sped
Such are our brave young days,
Though full of life oftentimes we feel faint
When thunder breaks & goddesses our saint
I took a room to convalesce
Mid palatial surrounds,
I was a mess, for more or less
A week of sleeps & sounds,
Until half-heal’d I took the sights, great palaces & grounds.
Murshidabad
October
2008
Sacred City
Wither’d lotus petals,
Pale, faded,
Aged stems tottering in the wind
Liu Ping-chung
Alluvial flatlands roll ever West,
The Ganga Matha shimmers into sight,
Here came the British banquet of conquest
To dine on the age old City of Light;
Siva’s domain
Beside her fragrant flow
Where marigold & grain ash-daub’d ascetics throw.
To Sarnath, thou deer park of bliss,
Stretch’d by the Holy River,
He came, gave men a kiss,
“No longer I Siddhartha!”
They knew not what to make of this,
“Call me, please, the Buddha!”
They sat & listen’d to the first sermon
Soft on the lips of the enlighten’d one.
Hypnofixed on that bamboo bier
Down by the riverside,
The pyres appear, fire’d atmosphere
Reeking for those that died
Their blessed death, Kashi lit up as Vedic chantsmen vied.
Varanasi
October
2008
Mutiny
In ripen’d years, when blood flows cool,
Then mankind cease to play the fool,
Grow mighty cautious, grave & wise
Allan Ramsay
Countryside chiming like a park of Kent,
No wonder here they chose to stamp the Pax,
Alas, civilisation really meant,
The ignorance, the excrescence, the tax;
Shame struck the Oudh,
Their noble kingdom next,
Shamed as their Nawab bow’d while the British annex’d.
The North declared the battleground,
Fuels focus for mutiny,
Fifty thousand aggriev’d surround
Eurasian residency,
All day & night the cannon’s pound
The dreams of Dalhousie,
Til’ Redcoats, march’d under merciless skies,
Redemption bring, slaying those who’d dared rise.
Regent ruins as red as dust,
Cupid’s nuzzling couples,
Are held in trust, coated with dust
From those desp’rate battles,
They form symbolic sepulchre of empiric shackles.
Lucknow
October
2008
Delhi
This is a sight that Wordsworth never knew,
whether looking down from mountain, bridge or hill:
An endless field of lights, white, orange, & blue
Bruce Bawer
I stood tall as the mountains for a week,
Better tall than a tourist at the Taj,
Each morn spent with the Empire’s highest peak,
The summit of my soiree round the Raj;
With dew-eyed wrench
I ride back to battle,
The noise, the heat, the stench cloaking the capital.
From the steppes of central Asia
Camest Nadir Shah, great guest
Of mickle-minded emporer,
Th’ancestral riches to wrest,
Twas a festival of slaughter,
Blood splasht on treasure chest
As seized from the fabulous peacock throne
He gripp’d the Koh-i-Noor, Babar’s bright stone.
As a hundred Sunday innings
Spreads round the grassy mile,
Tricky spinnings, wicket winnings,
Each man an Anglophile,
For cricket is to India as Egypt needs the Nile.
Old Delhi
November
2008
Taj Mahal
in its eyes you will see a rare
ancestor
a mystique, long gone
Ana Golejshka Dzikova
To leave no regrets is to lead good life,
& so, despite cursing the tourist trail,
That glory-monument to man & wife
Upon my wanderlust must now prevail;
Oer crowd & lane
The Taj Mahal arose,
No dome of France nor Spain could match her matchless poise.
The house of Shah Jahan grew hushed
His grief was overbearing,
But chieftains prosper best when crush’d,
The weeping wreath outwearing,
He briefly with the heavens brushed,
All who saw were staring,
A testament to beauty’s deep adore,
The Taj Mahal, Cupid’s conquistador.
With prime Indian Icon
Tick’d from my tourist box,
The North was won, tour almost done,
As workers watch the clocks,
Downloading my flight details as the homeward notion knocks.
Agra
November
2008
Cricket
Since man’s but pasted up of Earth,
& ne’er was cradled in the skies,
What Terra Lemnia gave thee birth
John Hall
This short, Byronic sortie to the East,
Sometimes tourist, sometimes adventurer,
Sees sublime sunsets as each new night pieced
This myriad India together;
Yon Udaipur,
The honeymooner’s dream,
I trundl’d to Jaipur to watch my native team.
Some worship Christianity,
Or pray five times to Mecca,
Perhaps Laxsmi, Saraswathi,
Lord Vishnu, Krishna, Siva,
The Buddha, Kali, Parvati,
Durga or Ganesha,
But all thro India one god is king –
Sachin Tendulkar at the opening.
With Brits I met at Andaman
We watch’d a thrilling game,
With swifty ton K Peiterson
Native spin bowlers tame,
Each stroke applauded by our hosts, the batsman flashing flame.
Jaipur
November
2008
Kipling Country
With me along some Strip of Herbage strown
That just divides the desert from the sown,
Where name of Slave & Sultan scarce is known
Omar Khayyam
Reaching the eastern edge of Rajstahan
The stands abandoned fortress goblin-hewn
While wandering within & round its span
I wondered if it was some vedic boon;
Neath red rampart
I Kipling’d for a week,
For poets slowly part from places quite unique.
From dying Satis’ final words
Flew an ancyent prophecy,
“When princes meet hunting the herds,
Born of Mewar & Bundi,
One must die!” Ajit aim’d at birds,
His arrow flies keenly…
Whether by chance, by fate, by secret gain,
Rana, the prince of Udaipur, lay slain.
I took a ride thro villagery,
Sought out a waterfall,
It seemed to me like ecstasy,
Immersing body’s all,
& driving back, dried by the breeze, felt burdens lift from soul.
Bundi
November
2008
Desert Fortress
I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,
Which came from the soul of the organ
Arthur Sullivan
My camel treks thro’ realms of chivalry,
Follow’d barefoot by this gypsy player
Conjuring scenes upon his Sarrangee,
Charming the desert night with sung prayer;
Ah! Completed
Is our nomadic flow,
An ancyent city stood on tabletop plateau.
At the steep walls of the fortress
Insatiable Akbar stared,
Those soldiers in their saffron dress
Say Jauhar has been declared,
They rode to die in gentilesse,
A martyrdom soon shared…
As wives & children step in to the fire
Chants of victory climb with the empire.
The sun hoists flame up oer the walls,
A cruel & hostile red,
My contree calls, fresh footstep falls
By dry Ghamberi’s bed,
Aim’d at Burnley, on the dusty Daksinpatha I tread.
Chittorgarh
November
2008
L´Envoi
How far from Malaya
To snowy Ben Doran?
How far from Johore to Saltcoats or Ross?
David Ross
I pause in Ratlam for a two night stay,
My long tours’s circle drawing to a close,
An obscure spot to while the last full day
Before the latest triumph of the Rose;
One more sleeper,
Neath overarching sky,
Yon the pale Narmarda, pulls back into Mumbai.
I saw so many miseries
But I saw much beauty too,
All of mankind’s categories
Thro’ this single city drew,
What mixture of cacophonies
Climb’d with the morning dew –
Them to mine ears did seem a morning choir,
The chauntings of the children of empire.
I step ‘tween mendicants, oxen,
Fresh stools, strays, tips & crows,
Strange monkeymen, hags, swine & then
A sense of friendship grows,
One glorious sub-continent, as complex as a rose!
Dharavi
November
2008
(AA) Canto 75: Bleeding Streets
**********************************
I bow in front of the victims of this monstrous crime
Joachim Gauck
Life is Cheap
Star-shine and darkness are blended
as we gather with those we hold dear.
And the Light is present among us
Katy Phillips
As Qasab boards the boat thoughts flutter’d back,
To days when came those well-dress’d men to town,
His father offer them potato snack,
Instead they’d look’d his boy, him, up & down;
“He’s fit & strong,
Please, for a righteous cause,
& money, lot’s of it, relinquish what is yours.”
Eftsoons this boat left Pakistan
To fight the unbelievers,
Hearing the mantra of one man,
‘The world shallgrow to fear us!’
A tap upon his shoulder’s span,
“Paradise is near us,
But first we must kill & keep on killing,
Then Allah will receive us” “God willing!”
The vessel furrow’d steadily,
The sunset left the sky
“For this to be successful see
That all of ye will die,
No spirit faint, no nerveless limbs, let glory amplify!”
Arabian Sea
23rd November
2008
Bollywooder
Each pace precipitates an infinite staircase,
Each gesture the nucleus of a new cosmos.
If the wise sows not, he is but barren reason
Alejandro Jodorowsky
Some say Bollywood is monotonous,
Verdict of thirty thousand King & I’s,
But life is better led monogamous,
Too many fingers & too many pies;
Pluck’d from the street
An extra was I made,
Thro fancy dress & heat & thousand rupees paid.
I met her in a dressing room,
Fair actress of the Deccan,
Both hearts beating a little boom
As though we duell’d at Tekken,
The jewels of romancing bloom
Well, that’s what I reckon,
For from this pretty princess of the Raj
An invitation to dine at the Taj.
My life blended with India,
O diamond in the crown!
The emperor, the hag-beggar,
The pale-face & the brown,
The gutter-dwellers looking up the godheads looking down.
Mumbai
November 26th
2008
Angels of Death
So warm were they, with destinies
Like straining stars that lustrously
Bore Goethes, Newtons not to be
Olive Tilford Dargan
The Kuber grew dense with the stench of death,
Decks sticky with the dead crews’ bloody pool,
Their captain panicking breath-on-sharp-breath
Beneath such bullies barely out of school;
“Tis Allah’s will
&, with Allah willing,
Five thousand we shall kill, kill & keep on killing!”
Each lad was born in poverty
Midst the slums of Pakistan,
Each son was bought for no small fee,
Little pawns in grander plan,
Up in Thatta’s rugged country
Hard train’d the Taliban
& the keen-eyed Lashkar-e-Taiba,
Melding proud, young footsoldiers together.
When them just ten miles from the shore,
They cut the captain’s throat,
With bag & oar ten ‘students’ pour
Into a dinghy boat,
Flinging Islamic retribution ‘cross the Mumbai moat.
The Arabian Sea
November 26th
2008
First Landing
A man may tear a jewel
From a monster’s jaws
Cross a tumultuous sea
Bhartrihari
Night nestled midst the vast financial core
Of our globe’s most massive democracy,
Where twenty seven million or more
Live in a state of guarded apathy;
The terror threat
For Mumbaikers distinct,
But far too fast to fret vast lives in living link’d.
Three wallahs watch the rubber craft
Slip inside their slummy quay,
Ten kempt lads leap ashore & laugh’d,
Shaking off the liquid sea,
An old man thought this rather daft,
Asking who could they be?
”Mind your business,” spoke a lad in blue,
Not in Mharati but fluent Urdu.
They clasp’d each others shoulder-blades,
& there did pray awhile,
Ten young, outrageous renegades
Into five pairs now file,
& flag down five black hackney cabs to fly the final mile.
Colaba
November 26th
2008
Last Supper
Soldiers who spoke
A terrible language
Broke into the mosque
Robert Minhinnick
Full unaware he bore Death’s messengers,
Their shifty ambience so strange & cold,
Mohammed dropp’d off his young passengers
Outside the bustling Café Leopold;
A famous place
Racing with western dress
Whose smiling, happy face would soon be bloody mess.
At first a hand grenade goes off
In momentary stunning
Unpitying the gunmen scoff
At cowering & running
Aiming their train’d kalashnikov
At them all down-gunning –
If you were eating in this place that night
A bullet would have been your only bite!
The gunmen smugly stroll’d outside
Into an empty street
The shutters slide as all folks hide
& fleet are fleeing feet
As two young Muslims move along these murders to repeat.
Colaba
November 26th
2008
Stood Up
Man is his own star: & the soul that can
Render an honest & a perfect man
Commands all light, all influence, all fate
John Fletcher
I was an English poet on the road
Destin’d to write an epic for the world,
Had met a pretty Dutch girl far abroad,
With polish’d skin & eyebrows heaven curl’d;
We’d made a date
To dine up at the Taj
Where, early, I would wait, sate dreaming of the Raj.
I was namore that bastard boy
From a two-up, two-down town,
Instead the flash Viscount Mountjoy,
With connections to the crown,
Whose mistress lives at the Savoy,
For whom I’d bought a gown
Of sleeveless saree-silk… my trance distress’d
By ringing phone… “hello’ there’s great unrest
About the city, roads are closed,
I cannot get to you,”
My date disclos’d, our date depos’d,
I might as well just do,
That dinner on my own & gaze upon this gorgeous view.
The Taj Mahal Hotel
November 26th
2008
Victoria Station
Men watched the drama from the foreturret,
Perched on the crosstrees, on the yards & masts
In an exploded pyramid of caste
Douglas Dunn
Still dripping in her British Empire bling,
Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus,
To temple, village, wages & wedding
Carries half of India’s passengers;
Fifty-four lives
Buy their one-way singles,
Amang men, bairns & wives random murder mingles.
As Ajamal sprays cold bullets wide
He feels the floor vibrating,
The sadness of his suicide
This moment satiating,
His friend & team-mate by his side
& them hyped awaiting
The Heaven that a martyr hopes to gain,
Thoughts amplified by infidels in pain.
As policemen leapt into battle,
They instantly leapt out,
Pot-shot pistols, jamming rifles,
Were never in the bout,
Where should be gushing bravery but fluster-headed drought.
CST Sation
November 26th
2008
Familicides
It’s not the pack who were the stronger,
Smaller beasts beat you to tatters –
And who fights now over your carcass
Frigyes Karinthy
She threw herself upon the only child
Of her fourth daughter, as the floor vibrates,
She saw his tiny face & slowly smil’d,
As mothers do to soothe our troubl’d states;
“Hey – hey grandma
Why did we take the train?”
Blood swilling in her bra, grin wincing, now, with pain,
“& why is grandpa bleeding there,
Unmoving where he’s lying?”
“Be quiet, shhh…” piercing the air
Scrape-seers a baby’s crying,
Whose mother smothers her with care,
Bullets started flying,
& blew away that mother’s bloody head,,,
Another thudding body joins the dead.
He look’d upon this busy work,
The scene was slaughter glum,
As with a jerk, from gun bezerk
To thoughtful ‘ergo sum’,
They left that British terminus buzzing on more to come
V.T. Station
November 26th
2008
Antisemitismus
How beautiful it would have been
Living under that roof
The two together always
Manuel Acuna
On mobile phones the leader’s voice arrives,
“Among the distortions & perversions
Of self-seeking priests & pandits, the lives
Of Jews worth fifty non-Jews…” aspersions
Chok’d thick with bile,
As kick’d-down double doors
Reveal’d a handsome pile upstretching sev’ral floors…
As Rabbi Hollzberg & his wife,
The pretty Rivka, chatted,
She chopping garlic with a knife,
Idyllic was shatter’d,
Whose guests that day possess’d a life
More than their lives matted
For they were hosts – & bloodlust to decrave
Shouted, “Shoot me! Shoot me!” both instant brave.
& being symbiotic,
Their deathblood merg’d in pools,
Robotical men shot each skull
Once more, then dragg’d their tools
Of murder on remorselessly, like horses rode by ghouls
Nariman House
November 26th
2008
(AA) Canto 76: Terrorisms
**********************************
What trouble is beyond the rage of man?
What heavy burden will he not endure?
Jealousy, faction, quarreling, & battle,
The bloodiness of war, the grief of war
Sophocles
Friends & Enemies
There was a corpse outside
It was a fine and cruel noose
coming out the corpse’s mouth
Ramón Palomares
Meltem Muezzinoglu tests her husband,
“Those must be fireworks”, “for the cricket”
“I’m sure,” says Seyfi, stroking soft her hand,
But life’s ludicrous lottery ticket
Might win, might fail…
At gunpoint sardine press’d
Crams many tremble-pale Trident Oberoi guest.
They march them to a staircase top
Found guns towards them aiming,
“We are Turkish!” pleads Seyfi, “stop!”
“Get down…” forced down, as flaming
Muzzles ten poor guests do drop
Murderously maiming,
Just five were left, three women & the Turks
Buried in bodies spasming death jerks.
Reloading from an ammo belt,
Off led that battle team
In her back Meltem coldly felt
A rifle, says Hakim
‘Just to be, no more, this is all, this is the joy supreme.’
The Taj Mahal Hotel
November 26th
2008
Small Matter of Timing
Alone at the bar, strangers everywhere,
the waiter is filling my glass with wine
glass after glass
Mohammed Bennis
As gunmen from the sanguine Leopold
Make contact with a fellow battleteam
For the next part of the raid to unfold
They must now strike at Mumbai’s social cream;
Security
All gunn’d down at the dawn
Such brash militancy the world has never known!
So, as I felt a movie star
Soaking up the superb views
Some Maharajah at the bar
Sparkling in his diamond shoes
My soul sensed Vishnu’s avatar
& there began to muse
On this moment’s explosive catalyst
A thousand thoughts too terrible to list!
I’d never felt alive before
Our streets now the front line
As more & more the art of war
Moves through this life of mine
First nervousness on undergrounds now gunsounds as we dine!
The Golden Dragon
November 26th
2008
Attacking the Taj
I pity all that evil are –
I pity & I mourn,
But the Supreme hath fashioned all
Robert Nicol
As gunmen from the sanguine Leopold
Make contact with a fellow battleteam,
For the next part of the raid to unfold
They’ll have to strike at Mumbai’s social cream;
Security
Gunn’d down quite merciless,
Jumpit militancy, girl slumps dead in a dress!
I felt a modern movie star
Soaking up the superb views,
Some Maharajah at the bar
In his sparkling diamond shoes,
Soul sensing Vishnu’s avatar
& there began to muse
Upon this night’s explosive catalyst,
A thousand thoughts too terrible to list!
I’d never felt alive before,
Our streets now the front line,
As more & more the Art of War,
Moves through this life of mine,
First nervousness on undergrounds now gunsounds as we dine!
The Golden Dragon
November 26th
2008
Death of a Bell-boy
Alas ! that death-like Sleep, or Night,
Should power have to close those Eyes ;
Which once vy’d with the fairest Light
Richard Leigh
Inside the Trident Oberoi hotel
The bell-boy stuck to that boring routine,
Of guest, & bag, & lift, & room, & bell
That strict path ground out since he was sixteen;
What was that sound,
Like cars cought in a crash?
He fearing spins around to see the front doors smash
& caught a bullet in the gut,
& dropp’d like Balfour pheasant,
Losing sensation in his foot,
His vision deliquescent,
He slowly let his eyelids shut,
His heart grew hesitant,
Then beat its last, & as his limbs relax,
His brain shuts down like wick-flame doused in wax.
As gunfire rattled floor-to-floor,
All the guests grew fearful,
Phoning the law, bolting the door
For something horrible
Was happening in their hotel, something incredible.
Trident Oberoi
November 26th
2008
The Death of Thalkur Woghela
No sooner had I got back home
Than they told me straight away
How my best friend had been killed
Konstantin Vanshenkin
On ample barenesses of poverty
Build gods our thrones, Thalkur calmly squats
By his young child, absorbing utterly
The fragrances upfloating from the pots;
A thudding knock
Opens the wooden doors,
A sudden sense of shock, a holy moments pause,
& then existence theater
Into intuition sprang,
Ishmail hisses, “give me water!”
Thakur felt the truthbomb bang,
Caught he’d been by a predator,
The sounds of gunshots rang,
Another unbeliever bidden dead,
His young son hidden underneath the bed.
“My brother,” blurted Kassab, “come
We have much work to do…”
So, chewing gum, they left the slum,
An uncheck’d wrecking crew,
Who like those two Columbine lads towards the next kill drew.
Mumbai
November 26th
2008
Wedding Crashers
All day; in troops they pursued the hostile people.
They hewed the fugitive grievously from behind
With swords sharp from the grinding
Egill Skallagrimsson
As when the seers of aulden times first saw
The face of God, these boys were mesmerized
By opulence bored deep in Vedic lore,
For many moments they stood hypnotis’d;
Voice breaks the trance
“Go, brothers, start the fires,”
Nearby, two men from France, the dregs of old empires,
Beg for their lives, but blown away,
As round them doors down booted
By chaos children, whose cruel play
By Loki’s Lashkar tutor’d,
Whom, like a Viking popinjay,
Moral laws refuted,
& brought down death, efficiently, on lives –
Fate knows, but time will tell, which skull survives.
A bolted door was tattershot,
Amit & Varsha scream’d,
They’d only got to tie the knot
That day, but then were cream’d
By slayers of the innocent, that dozen, double-team’d.
The Taj Mahal Hotel
November 26th
2008
Random Murder
I will walk these streets
without fear of whatever unforeseen
may lunge at me when I’m lost in thought
Miguel Barnet
A taxi stopp’d for Laxmi Narayan,
A businessman now several minutes late,
With hindsight ‘twould be better if he’d ran.
& put escaping death down to good fate;
Seconds to slow
Kasab’s black bag was seen,
That with a bull’s bellow proceeds to smithereen!
Five taxis had quite random fann’d,
All thro’ the conurbation,
Each setting up a firebrand
To spread the devastation,
A Muslim Iman lost a hand
In a petrol station,
Proving how conflict in religion’s name
More ploy by power delegating blame.
She was a happy citizen
& now she has no legs,
Another sundown denizen
To join the gutter-dregs,
Like blind & tuneful eunuchs or the waddling leper-pegs.
Wadi Bunder
November 26th
2008
Wounded!
And will future generations
recite these stories by heart, hand
over chest?
Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner
The call came in from deepest Pakistan,
“Brothers, you may commence your killing spree!”
But nothing in their multi-layer’d plan
Prepar’d them for such pangs of luxury;
Wild opulence
Blows peasant minds aback…
Gathering their senses they went on the attack.
Splitting their murder squad in two
One vaults the cantilever,
& every movement, in their view
Soon dying non-believer,
Into my own life-space they flew
Like the swine-flu fever,
Unwelcome & unwanted & unwell,
We sweated til a bullet broke the spell.
Shot ripping thro’ mine upper arm,
Dropp’d I, death-pretending,
No magi psalm, no pagan charm
Could prevent death’s pending…
So held my breath until I heard those murderers descending…
The Golden Dragon
November 26th
2008
Meeting Spirits
The night is full of mystery,
Whose understanding is
In trying no more to understand
William Montgomerie
As ugliest commotion moves elsewhere.
An aesthete at a wild tornado’s heart.
I saw a wise man sat upon a chair,
Seeking pleasant refugia, set apart;
His beard was long,
Hill rustic was his dress,
With flight of beads among white robes of simpleness,
Who said, “I am a student of
Peerless Shantiniketan,
Perusha’s all-pervading love
Denies all definition,
Sometimes the astral spheres above
Separate contrition
From human conscience, letting angers rise…”
I stood & star’d into these endless eyes.
As ignorance must drift away,
Knowledge stays immortal,
The gentle sway of gods at play
Simmering aortal,
Engag’d my my spirit, full of peace, thro’ Nabataean portal.
The Taj Mahal Hotel
November 26th
2008
(AA) Canto 77: Ramayana
**********************************
Great cultures start in poetry
IA Richards
Two Poets
And this is what he sang or said,
In notes of mingled music made;
And now he paused, and now he played
N.V. Thadani
Atop a hotel’d rooftop apse I poise,
This Cadair Idris of mine eastern rhymes,
Breaking from trance I glance towards the noise
Of saddhu, who to summit slowly climbs;
“Aalvaar,” said he,
“Valmiki is my name,
Ye could, perhaps, tell me of worlds from whence ye came?”
“Alas,” said I, “My plane seems shorn
Of Universal Values,
Depite all things ’tis still wartorn,
Streaming battle-splatter’d news…
Tell me, has ever there been born
A soul that all this rues,
Brimming with truth, honour, corragio,
As Florence did eight hundred years ago?”
“There was,” replied wisw Vaalmeeki,
“Such a man of Karma;
Love, honesty, heart, loyalty,
Truth, righteousness & dharma –
Come by me sit & listen to the legend-song of Rama.”
Arunachala
Noble Births
For lo ! the same old myths that made
The early ‘stage successes,’
Still ‘hold the boards,’ & still are played
Austin Dobson
I sing of Rama & his noble way;
Of human & animal, queen & king,
Of monsters, heroes & that dashing day
That keeping faith shall true salvation bring;
He was no lad
Of ordinary birth,
Within whom Vishnu had hidden godhead on earth.
Born in majestic Ayoudha,
Midst the first sprigs of the spring,
In the kingdom of Kosala
Where the Vedas saints do sing,
His father’s name Dasaratha,
Who was, too, Rama’s king,
Outshining men as moons outshine the stars,
First patron of our Prince of Avatars.
Graceful Laxsmi, Lord Vishnu’s queen,
Born as Princess Seeta,
Both grew unseen, ’til aged sixteen
Rama first did meet her,
& feels love leap between them, eternal, like a cheetah.
Ayoudh
Exiles
Here’s an apple. If you love me,
take it, girl, & then take me.
If you don’t – well, take the apple
Plato
As Sita was a child of holy glow,
So many try to win her hand in vain,
Only the bending of Lord Siva’s bow
Shall King Janaka’s strict acceptance gain;
Now Rama tries,
&, with a heave, at last,
Into the sun swept skies lets loose an arrow fast…
When two souls were reunited
So their woes on Earth begin,
Ancyent promises recited
Sends the King of Ayoudh aspin
Dasa-Ratha laughs delighted,
This toothless crone shall win,
The banishment of Rama fourteen years,
Fair Seeta stems the flow of father’s tears,
& with her husband, dutiful,
Leaves for a pale exile,
A pair so bright & beautiful,
Long summers in their smile,
For lovers true will share with joy the rigors of life’s trial.
Kosala
Magic Weapons
Life’s not something,
we put on the mantel of habit
and forget
Sohrab Sepehri
As exiled are these captains of a race,
Just leaves & deerskin cover modesty,
Thro’ pathless forest, roofless place-to-place,
Meet many rishis pledging tapasvi;
Of which number
One close to Rama drew,
Whisp’ring, “young wanderer I have three gifts for you!
Here is Brahma’s shining arrow
That targets never misses,
This, here, is Vishnu’s sacred bow,
Light as heavenly blisses,
& Indra’s quiver I’ll bestow,
O, such a gift this is,
For if to thee the Rakshasas appear
Thou art the only man these foes will fear.”
With this the rishi elsewhere drifts
As tho’ he’d never been,
Now Rama lifts these precious gifts,
Admires & spits them clean,
Aware that destiny us leads down strange paths unforeseen.
Chitrakoota Hill
Khara & Soorpanakha
I have composed this magical narrative;
I synchronized the lyrics as
A strewn new rose is recreated
Waris Shah
Now comes the start of Rama’s long distress,
Ravana’s demon-sister him would woo…
Him for no shameless female would undress,
Lakshmana’s honour into fury flew;
Her nose & ears
Sliced off & fall to floor,
Wailing away in tears a savage vengeance swore;
Returning with a brotherhood
Fourteen thousand Raksha strong,
Each braying to spill Rama’s blood,
Stood defiant as King Kong,
Whose arrows flung forth true & good,
Great carnage set among
Those demons as he dodg’d their rocks & trees –
His arrow storm the spray that swats cat’s fleas.
When, at last, the murder over
Raakshasas second best,
With Ravana’s younger brother
Dead lying with the rest –
Quaking the king of Lanka like nuclear climax press’d.
Dandaka Forest
Golden Stag
The weather brought
an injured deer
near the door
Magdalena Zurawski
Despite his chief advisor full of fear,
Lord Ravana’s sworn upon vengeance,
Transforms Maricha to a little deer,
So beautiful in tender innocence;
Its lovely face
By raptured Sita seen,
Forcing Rama give chase to satisfy his queen.
Now aiding cries of false distress
Flies demon-trick’d Lakshana,
Who lovely Sita left helpless
Unto the wrath Ravana
Who comes to her in hermit dress
Feigning humble manner,
That with a laugh is thrown off, & the guise,
Ten burning heads uprais’d with blazing eyes.
By mule-drawn golden chariot
Them off to Lanka flew,
Tho’ fishanet she does not fret
Down to a summit threw,
Her jewels… hoping mountain monkeys would know what to do.
Karnataka
Hanuman
If I be the rain
you the earth
let love be the seed
John Agard
After five weeks of searching Rama flopp’d
Exhausted, by Sugriva, Monkey King,
Who, showing him the necklace Sita dropp’d,
& promis’d to help him in her finding;
All monkeys, all
Across the world, divide
From Mandalay to Gaul, to find Prince Rama’s bride.
Lord Hanuman, of Monkeys great,
Whose name was writ in water,
Learns of the grievous Lankan fate
Of King Janaka’s daughter,
& hoping he was not to late,
Leaping as he sought her,
Bounded the Ocean to Ravana’s isle –
A single leap sheer vaulting mile-on-mile.
Once landed he transforms feline,
Soon Sita came in view,
O weary whine, O pining pine,
Til faith she does renew,
Sweet news from this whispering cat, “Rama shall recue you!”
Asoka Park
Battle of Lanka
With horns of flame & haggard eye
The mountain vomited with blood,
A thousand corpses down the flood
Roy Campbell
As Hanuman relays happy report
Rama is charg’d with strength fantastical,
Now with Sugriva & his heaving court,
Hurries to Lanka & a grand battle;
Into the waves
They fling great rocks & trees,
Enough for monkey braves to skip across the seas.
Soon conflict flurries night & day
In the mountains & the plains,
Morasses of mad melees sway
Blood streams down like summer rains,
Swerve Elephants thro’ dust & fray
As Raakshasas grow pains –
In a flash Ravana faces Rama,
Promising his life & wife to Yama.
The duel raged, all mercy gone,
Both sworn to each attack,
Maul marathon as one-by-one
Shorn ten heads growing back,
Til Brahma’s barb pierced demon heart with wild, climatic CRACK!
Lanka
Sita’s Virtue
Thus absence dyes, & dying proves
No absence can consist with Loves
That do partake of fair perfection
Owen Felltham
As demons die so do the skies grow dim,
No longer lit by fine heroic fire,
Indra himself could never vanquish him
Who now lies lifeless on a burning pyre;
Denounced by drums,
Shadow’d by dishonour,
To Rama Sita comes, tainted shame upon her.
& quoth, “My love, if ye doubt me,
I, too, shall go to the flame,
For tho’ I bare full purity
Hear I gossip of my shame!”
Thus Sita steps up happily
Onto that burning blame
But not to ashes did her fair flesh fall,
For she was honest – Agni heard her call,
& saves her from those lethal burns,
Her faith her fate embalms,
& justice earns, now she returns
Into her chosen’s arms,
As when a Trojan poem ends & all that fuss becalms.
Lanka
(AA) Canto 78: Mopping Ups
**********************************
After the one thousand celestial years of Kali-yuga, the Satya-yuga will manifest again. At that time the minds of all men will become self-effulgent
Bhāgavata Purāṇa
Callousosities
Through the view of the city
In flames, we rewound times
Of executions at beaches
Ben Okri
With policemen reeling like headless chickens
Ismail & Ajmal leave the groaning hall,
Such sad sight of sticky bodies sickens,
This was no movie-shooting, not at all;
A baby wail’d
Beside its dying kin,
As when the Ak-Ak fail’d to save wargrave Berlin.
By GPS these gunmen roam,
To perpetrate further crimes
Moving thro’ lamplit monochrome
As if marching under limes,
Loosing three potshots at the home
Of India’s own Times,
Then passing Hazad Madan Police Force hide
Gates lock’d & lights switch’d off, all terrified.
Another target search’d they then
Off in the distance saw
The temple where a citizen
If injur’d, sick & sore,
Can enter into altruism’s blood-flow guarantor.
Cama
November 26th
2008
Desperate Scuffles
Clamour raised upon clamour
Rattle of armour, death squeals,
A mind, erratic within
Burns Singer
As surrealities blew absurder,
Watching the news on silent sets they know
Mumbai was war zone, whirlwind of murder,
All doors locking, shutters closed, curtains drew,
The hospital
Grew nervous, fearful, tense
Strong as Sevastopol, seditious with suspense.
Rang gunshots, them the very first,
That turn’d real life to battle,
As Harishandra heard the burst
His very bones did rattle,
Then Abu Ismail turn’d & curs’d,
Waving shiny metal,
At Harishandra’s throat, he dash’d & slash’d,
Held back by briefcase, tho’ his neck was gash’d
He kneed this groping terrorist,
A whopper for the groin
Who groan’d & hiss’d, then shot, then miss’d,
Then trotted off to join
His fellow chattel battle-boy to life’s breathing to purloin.
Cama Hospital
November 26th
2008
Labour Pains
In the distance a star was absorbing
my tiredness, and itself heading like a pilgrim
towards you, leaving blank its place in the heavens
Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi
Praying to Vishnu, Allah & the Lord
Of Love, rough hatred stalks the corridors,
Ishmail waving his rifle like a sword,
Qasab shooting at shadows every pause;
Within one room
A woman writhes in pain,
To scream would mean their doom, white sheets began to stain…
“You must, my child, this pain endure…”
Nurse fixes deep each eye,
A flash of pupils rippling pure,
“Else all of us here will die
Your bonnie infant please immure
& little longer, try
Delay her first fresh gulp of precious breath,
For yards away rampage the guards of death!”
She squinted eyes, she bit her lips,
She clutch’d the sweating sheet,
Twyx flesh & hips her baby rips,
As labor pains repeat,
Wrack’d with a primal hunger young life craved for momma’s teet.
Cama Hospital
November 26th
2008
Death of Heman Kukari
Anguish, anguish is my heritage
my throat’s wound
my heart’s cry in the world
Par Lagerkvist
Ajmal felt Ismail was a Hashemite
& Mumbai a modern Acaladama,
Sad trails of bumbledom bled thro’ the night
& now, as they exited the Cama,
Some car appears,
Four policemen spot within,
As fast the chassis nears its shot into a spin.
Mumbai’s first counter-terrorist
Flung unbreathing from his seat,
A second dragg’d out by his wrist
For to bleed out in the street,
Another quickly got the gist
& barely breath’d a beat –
Awkward, wounded, pretending to be dead,
As on him two dead bodies bled & bled.
As Ismail sped a getaway
Qasab got out his gun,
A silver spray, a ricochet
Cuts down a Cath’lic nun
These might well be their ending-hours, but damn it, they’d have fun!
Cama
November 26th
2008
Closest Calls
My thoughts are as a garden plot, that knows
No rain but of thy giving, & no rose
Except thy name. I dedicate it thine
Mu’Tamid
As Arun Jadav under colleagues lay,
As breathing’s imperceptible shallows,
As firm an ‘I don’t want to die today,’
Inside his mind demolish’d unkind gallows;
A phone vibrates,
Yogesh Patil’s pocket,
Explodes, the jangling grates, ‘please, sweet Siva, stop it!’
Qassab whipp’d round & fired & burst,
Like Klansmen at the lynching,
His body trembling with blood-thirst,
Every fiber flinching,
The bullets Yogesh murders first,
Then, steadily inching
To Arjun’s head, them by a thumb’s width stopp’d,
The ammo spent, the cartridge Qassab dropp’d,
Reloading, then, he did not blaze
Another burst behind,
With pure amaze still lives his days,
The gods, for now, were kind,
But this night of the crazy dog, by which mad god design’d?
Cama
November 26th
2008
Modern Battles
For it’s order & trumpet & anger & drum,
And power & glory command you to come
The graves shall fly open & suck you all in
W.H. Auden
The terrorists secured room 632,
A perfect stronghold for the coming fray,
For India’s fury at them, they knew,
Would soon be flung as Cossacks heckl’d Ney;
Steroids, cocaine,
Syringes, LSD,
All weariness will wane aface the enemy.
They gather’d silken mattresses
& set the Taj aflame,
Giving the world such images
As to match Bin Laden’s fame,
The sixth floor burning glorious,
Alight in Allah’s name,
A vision strewn from London to Lahore
An instant twitter’d shore to distant shore.
I stagger’d in a bloody daze
Up to the rooftop high,
Watching the blazing fingers raise
Their angers to the sky,
& waiting for my rescuers sat down & wondered why?
Taj Mahal Hotel
November 27th
2008
Fading Strength
No gravestone stands at Babi Yar
Only coarse earth heaped roughly on the gash
Such dread comes over me. Today I am a Jew
Marie Syrkin
A new day dawns at Nariman – a day
Lacking water, food morsels, most distress’d
Mentalities, hostages frighted to say
A single word, when the world’s interest
Did rivet glare,
On them all, all agape,
& certainly aware, there will be no escape!
The mobile phone tinkl’d again,
All night long it had pester’d,
“My brothers, you shall soon obtain
Thy martyrdom, sequester’d
In paradise, but don’t be vain,
Do not be arrested,
God promises, with immortality
Comes honor, brother, listen, carefully,
Go shoot each hostage in the head,
& I’ll stay on the line,
& when them dead full shall be spread
The wings of the divine…”
Above the rooves rose helicopter rotors with a whine.
Nariman House
November 27th
2008
Relief
Let sanity have strength & men unite
Who in their individual lives are glad
That what remains of peace may yet prove strong
H.B. Mallailieu
I heard the sounds drift louder, shift elsewhere,
& reckon’d I’d survived, a fearsome fight
To fuel my pen, to make the world aware,
We are all children of the purest light;
When worst of wrongs
We druids educate,
Bring change thro’ famous songs to tame & elevate.
Ensophic as the dragonflies
That in times web will tarry,
The drum of humming multiplies
Upon the wings that carry
Onwards all, exhales like sighs
From some hari kari,
Unchains the soul that answers goes to seek,
Like standing on Parnassus’ sacred peak.
The sounds of loud explosions stopp’d,
& I felt safe at last
The fever flopp’d, the temper dropp’d
But still I flourish’d fast,
& so to rooftop ventur’d out, sprawl-corpses stepping past.
Taj Mahal Hotel
November 27th
2008
Captured
I ask’d a dying sinner, ere the tide
Of life had left his veins, – “Time!” he replied;
“I’ve lost ot! ah, the treasure!” & he died
Joshua Marsden
Finding a bullet had a back tyre blown,
Ismail & Ajmal fresher car hijack,
Behind, a bleeding cop took drags out his phone
A witness to their terrible attack,
“But that was then!”
He cried, “& this is now!
Warn all the men, yes warn them all, they’re headed for Gilgao!”
His comrades built a strong blockade,
As Skoda toward it sped,
Spinning before the barricade,
Like a weaver works a thread,
As Ismail finger’d his grenade
A volley blasts him dead,
Ajmal stumbles out feigning surrender
Gun hidden for final, senseless murder.
Noble Ombli leapt on Ajmal,
& took shot-after-shot
& as he fell his comrades yell,
Ascrum the gunman got,
A vital living clue for to unravel this foul plot.
Girgaun
November 27th
2008
(AA) Canto 79: Tainted Vedas
**********************************
It tugs at all of your sensibilities as a human being. It reminds everybody of the extraordinary complexity of choices in war & of what war does to people, to communities, to countries, to the world
John Kerry
Selectivities
Burning my house to keep
them out, you sowed wind. Hear it blow!
Soon you reap
John Beecher
Seyfi & Meltem felt no closer bond
Than ever had their lovers vows renew’d,
& of that comfort never felt more fond,
Holding each other as the others stew’d;
Those poor young girls,
With terror in their tears,
Whose captors’ flapping curls toward them, snarling, nears,
Then started to divide the five,
Stood, Seyfi, never surer,
“No, kill us here!” aloof, alive,
He pray’d the truthest surah…
“We no kill brothers,” as survive,
With no passion purer,
The Turks were separated, to a room
The others took, stepping inside their tomb
Into their bodies bullets pump pump’d
The Turks dared no glance back
As down they slumped, like baggage dump’d,
Adrenaline drew slack,
But left an epic galloping of springing cardiac.
Taj Mahal Hotel
November 27th
2008
Reactions
Well may the cavern depths of earth
Be shaken & her mountains nod;
Well may the sheeted dead come forth
JG Whittier
Far from a local policeman’s lethargy
Delhi’s commandos flown into the fray,
The bullish fervor of the NSG,
Design’d to keep Bin Laden’s dogs at bay;
Relief at last,
With the hardware grounded,
Before an hour has pass’d all flashpoints surrounded.
Mumbaikers bolted every door,
Their streets are mostly empty,
They’d never felt such fear before,
Tho’ fear they’d had & plenty,
Incredulity thro’ them tore
As down at CST
Bodies betow’d away by porter cars –
A city under siege & under stars!
Old tailor sat glued to his set,
Etch’d head held in wise hands,
Weary & wretched sensed the threat
From window-smashing bands,
A Muslim in the Hindu sphere, ‘Revenge!’ Mumbai demands.
Taj Mahal Hotel
November 27th
2008
Death of Fahadullah
You had a land in the age of darkness
unused to suicide or traffic
and its prayer-wheels turned like the sun
Mark Abley
As when, after our roseate sunset
With red rage bleeds, then fades as day brightens
Or when the last drags on a cigarette
Burns the throats cage, or when looseness tightens
Between two souls
Who thought they’d ever be
Like one, perfection falls to plight & perjury.
The phone rings out… “Yes?” “How are you?”
“Wounded…” “Brother Abdul?” “Slain…”
“Can you get out & throw a few
Grenades?” “I’ve none left…” “Your pain
In Paradise will pass…” outblew
The doors as muzzles train
Upon a shepherd’s son from Pakistan
Whose bullet stun, then slay… a tundra’s span
Of shock across the country drove
Groveless terraforma…
A spicy clove dropp’d in the stove,
“Want some chicken korma?”
“But mama, look!” “It’s just Mumbai” so dilutes the trauma.
Thiruvanamalai
October 27th
2008
Mumbai Musings
When this is all over I’ll make it up to you,
we’ll sit down and talk, as normal people do.
Evasiveness and half-truths will be a thing of the past
Gatoaitele Savea Sano Malifa
I stood upon the rooftop of the Taj,
All fire & brimstone in the floors below,
Strange place to find my soiree round the Raj,
A seat no other man would surely know;
Art lock’d in synch,
My subject & my song,
& I the living link, some lyrical King Kong.
As helicopters overhead
Went swoop-a-hoop like dragons,
I saw the discs & cable thread
Of pressmen in their wagons,
Wonder’d how many then were dead,
Lives fell’d by terror-guns,
In stiffen’d heaps of twisted sleeping piled,
It seem’d as if Laxsmi on me had smiled.
I watch the sunrise in the East,
Thank Surya for it,
Alive at least, the day’s deceas’d
Speaking to my poet,
“Remember us forever, sir, let your verses show it”
The Taj Mahal Hotel
November 27th
2008
Sandra Samuel
I hang on the edge
of this universe
singing off-key
Nikki Giovanni
When morning broke the Rabbi clung to life,
His hope the hand that clings to clifftop ledge,
“As hostages,” he soothes his antsy wife,
“Why would they ever cast us ‘cross the edge!”
Just one phone call
Demolishes their dreams,
Shot parents stain wall while little Moska screams.
His nanny left the hiding place
As the gunfire moved elsewhere,
& charging up the back staircase
Took the baby in her care,
Stared awhile at daddy’s face
That blankly back did stare
Then rush’d outside quite antilochus-fast –
Thro’ courage & quick-thinking dangers pass’d.
The operation’s master-throne
Watches events unfold,
Then telephones, the gunmen groan,
At slackness he did scald,
To hear, “You’re very close to Heaven, brothers please be bold.”
Nariman House
November 27th
2008
Negotiations
Oh Jerusalem, the city of sorrow
A big tear wandering in the eye
Who will halt the aggression
Nizar Qabbani
As Pakistani master on the phone
Of Qassab’s capture news communicates,
& overhead, wings spread, spymaster drone
Collected data, chewing on their dates,
Two terrorists
Counting Qassab’s costage
Unbind the rope-tied wrists of a dog-tired hostage.
“Tell India’s Prime Minister
If our brother not releas’d
To us then, something sinister
Sentenc’d is, as tension increas’d
Waved was explosive canister
In Norma’s face , threats ceas’d,
“If you do this, for him, for us, for me
You’ll sabbath celebrate with family.”
As she those wild demands relay’d,
The truth she truly knew
Her trust afraid, only delay’d
.Was death that closer drew –
She said goodbye, hung up the phone, “They’ll see what they can do.”
Nariman House
November 27th
2008
Wedding Reception
The echo rings of a strange mystery,
The human cry, the sobs of misery
Of a wild desperate love — defeated — spent
Ada Negri
With Mumbai’s grandest icon all aflame
& government resolve set to sternest,
The chief of police at last defends his name,
“Begin evacuation in earnest!
The enemy
Trapp’d on an upper floor!
Beneath them solemnly, lie casualties of war!”
Our weddings are inspiring
A day to never forget,
Guests were huddl’d from the firing
Like young tuna near a net,
From their miseries retiring,
They’d play’d Russian roulette –
Breathless, blinkless, scatter’d in shatter’d rooms –
Nerves shredded, heartbeats leaping at the booms.
The groom was safely led outside,
Eyes blinking in the light,
O how they cried, his sweet, young bride
Stood there in sari white,
Thou’ stain’d with others’ bloodshed, it had been a dreadful night.
Taj Mahal Hotel
November 27th
2008
Mopping Up
Never will I stop crying
yesterday’s memories will
always linger
Mutabaruka
As Berlin drank the dregs of Hitler’s war
With Allies all-denuding on all sides
The denouement of sixty hours of gore
Closes on two lads with no hope to hide;
Their final stand
Beneath blades heliborne
Sought out by death’s dread hand their manly vigor worn.
A rocket flew into their room
Half-a-second ‘fore demise,
That with a flash & crash & BOOM
Blew the brains out of their eyes,
‘Twas an instantaneous doom
& as the battle dies
The city streets all beeps & cheering pup
As if Tendulkar had won the World Cup.
They brought ten bodies from the shell,
Prayed for the lost rabbi,
For when war-hell on humans fell,
A few Jews too must die,
Like… when to Auschwitz Berlin once diverted gas supply.
Nariman House
November 27th
2008
Goodbye To All That
Thou should’st tell me all its story,
Whence, and where, it cometh here,
That my heart may yet be wary
Herr Ulrich von Liechtenstein
A festival of recriminations
Post-prandial, erupted thro’ Mumbai,
The wreckage of the battlefield stations
Itself in every single middle eye;
When dirty dusts
Taterdamalian
The common psyche crusts with scriking alien.
For that’s how terror operates
& all such propaganda
Some turns the murderers to greats
Like quenchless Alexander,
Some poisons us, some separates
Families – demand the
Truth, I say, not creochsiping bullshit,
Like Ukraine pseudo-wars & Covid spit.
The sentence of the people squats
& squirts its dirty shits
In copper pots… meanwhile robots
Assemble broken bits,
& recreate realities that terrorism splits!
India
November 27th
2008
(AA) Canto 80: Raj & Rose
**********************************
This supreme intellect Sarasvati
Illuminator of speech
May you adorn my throat
With words to clarify the world
Gendun Chopel
Inspirations
Always catching the thread
Of actions, histories,
To live, to think, to feel, to love
Boris Pasternak
The glitz, the glamour & the grandiose
Reduced to rubble at that privilege,
Now future tourists shall forever pose
By Taj & Trident as at Arnhem Bridge;
The all-clear sounds,
The hotels are secure,
Namore howling hellhounds must Mumbaikers endure.
While standing in the CST
I closed mine eyes a moment,
Imagining the liberty
Of murderous militant
The escharotic agony
Of scrannel innocent –
My gloomy heart begins to palpitate
Full ruminating on a friendless fate.
I desquamate to sleeper class
Upon the Goa train,
To slowly pass that mighty mass
Of skyscraper & crane,
Sat fingering my bullet-wound & wincing at the pain
Mumbai
December
2008
Golden Goa
Oh to be a boy once more,
Curly-headed, sitting singing
’Midst a thousand flowerets springing
Thomas Aird
We trace the outline of the Western Ghats,
Dawn stirs the steaming jungle from her sleep,
Goa gleams! Golden garden of ex-pats,
Dream shores Iberian…what Dolphins leap
From wave to wave
As deft as nymph on lyre –
Last lingering enclave of Lisboan empire.
For to oust upstart invader
The Marathas march in mail,
Ramparts stout at Fort Aguada
Fearsome wrath fails to avail,
A hiss…allowing another
Elizabethan pale,
Assault abandoned, acceptance express’d,
Obeysive message offer’d to the West.
We revv’d n masse to the Nine Bar,
My mount a twin-wheel’d steed,
Thro’ sunset sha to Shangri-La
Twirl’d with the techno creed,
On LSD, blues, ecstasy, beer, dexys, weed & speed.
Vagator
December
2008
Seasider
To guard all joys of yours from time’s estranging,
I shall be then a treasury where your gay,
Happy & pensive past unaltered is
Alice Meynell
Waking up in Goa I must admit
It feels nice to get away from it all;
Rainy days, credit crunch, fake news & shit,
Eking out existence from work to dole;
Come cruise the road
& set the spirit free,
Four thousand miles from home thro’ hill-gouge junglery.
Sacred Lord Parashurama
Striding mighty mountains high,
Drawing on the force of karma,
Letting cosmic arrow fly,
Landed with much melodrama
As Gods on Earth apply –
No business but obeyance as the land –
Pure, perfect stretch of sand – like summer spanned.
Dragon’s moon gazes on Goa,
The guest houses all full,
Half-built villa! homeless squatter,
The dogbark silence dull,
& when I woke the waves rolled white, the sun’s rays wonderful,
Benaulim
December
2008
Idyllicity
I open my eyes, but still cannot see,
the best thing I have, you’ve given to me,
I’ve searched all my life, to fulfill my being
Matthew Welsh
A little further down the Konkan tide
I found a beach & bay of perfect pitch,
Curvaceous groves of coconut groves ridge-side,
Divided by the sunset’s tribal switch;
Alive by night,
Days laze so solarful,
On motorbikes alight for quests historical.
Oporto’s captain strode along
The rampart’s red ramshackle,
“The moat is deep, the walls are strong,
Terrain too tough to tackle,
Still… tell the men in three-fold prong
Teach the East of battle!”
Another day of bloodshed to appall
Raja of Soonda soon surrenders all.
Cocktails at the Cafe del Mar,
Sharkmeat at Palolem
The beach, the bar, the Greek guitar,
The sweet peace of Patnem,
The cosmpolotania, life’s cool creme de la creme.
Canacona
Decemberr
2008
Paradise Beaches
I want to breathe the Lotus flow’r,
Sighing to the stars
With tendrils drinking at the Nile
Gwendolyn Bennett
To Pterodactyl town I took the train
Where brahmin study sanskrit in a chain
Of hands on shoulders, sat in groups of four,
Whose sacred dusts now coating my shoey skein;
As beach-by-beach
I stroll the island’s edge
With coconuts & peach, naan, roti & non veg.
I watched the golden fleeces hang
Upon the sands all gorgeous,
Beside Om Beach a young stud sang
A strong Oasis choruss,
From teeming jungle monkeys sprang,
Summon’d out by Horus
To share the sheer delight of Paradise –
Next up a plate of biryani rice.
On Half-Moon Beach with beer quite chill’d –
Refrigeratorless,
Each dawn unfold, out of the hold
Of vessels as they pass,
Big blocks of ice heave-carried in to cool the tourist class.
Gokarna
January
2009
In Search of Wellington
I anoint my flesh
Thought is hallowed in the lean
Oil of solitude
Wole Soyinka
Beside the rushes of the Kaveri,
Yon the silicon crush of Bangalore,
Lies the capital, lost to history,
Of Tipu Sultan, Tyger of Mysore;
An elfin town
Its ruin’d fortress wall,
Once keeping safe a crown, testament to it’s fall.
His Highness storm’d the British breach,
Precious pistols in each hand,
Teeth clench’d, show’ring curses to teach
This heathen to leave his land,
But royal flesh feels soft as peach,
At this, his final stand,
Troops of scarlet Scots, drunk on blood & rum,
Made murder to the beat of Wellesley’s drum.
We skirt the spot where wailers found
Bejewell’d Raja spread
On crimson ground ‘neath mangl’d mound
Of proud & loyal dead –
“Drive on,” my pony carriage whipt, to other beauties sped.
Sriringapatanam
January
2009
Saint Thomas
There’s a smile on the vine-clad shore,
A smile on the castl’d heights;
They dream back the days of yore
Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton
My soul’s boatman cuts thro’ Karnataka,
Bursting once more atop these feisty Ghats
Crowning luscious jungles of Kerala,
Where crucifix, idol & muslim mats
Share in delight,
Harmoniously furl’d,
Rare bastion of light in this conflicted world.
The swanhelm’d ship came in to sand
Bearing bearded apostle,
Stunn’d naked natives watch’d the hand
That stroked the Lamb’s own temple,
Fish levitate from sea to land,
Faith inspiring symbol –
From this day hence the sound of Jesus’ name
Shall burnish certain Asian hearts with flame.
A space in some young side I fill,
Amid the Toddies tall,
They sense my skill, a tense nil-nil,
‘Til as the shadows fall
I slink past six defenders (two were trees) – the winning goal!
Calicut
January
2009
Oriental Oasis
There are days like that
which sing orange and red
in the forest of our ordinary green
Moya Cannon
As Ghats give way to wide Deccan plateau
Hard is the journey – dusty, hot & dry –
As into view wyrd mounds of boulders grow
Ruin’d pillars that yore-since bouy’d the sky;
An Eastern Rome
Once soar’d amidst the stone,
The great King Krishna’s home’s now rubble, husk & bone.
This was a place to muse on man
In the ruins of his past,
Far from the world’s tobacco ban
& it’s television mast,
Was this part of a divine plan
Or mortal plaster cast –
Scenery settled in serenity,
A haven from human hostility.
Gliding by graceful coracle,
Serene as English spa,
Aft brief ramble, robust scramble,
Claim summit…from afar
Pastel luster’d sunsets muster’d oer Vijiyanagar.
Hampi
January
2009
Real India
But when thou joinest with the nine
& all the powers of song combine
We listen here on Earth
John Keats
I took a walk about the environs
Of Hampi’s lake, & found, there, India;
Chai at the crossroads, where old men in talk
Matchlight beedies all squatting together;
The plodding gait
Of water buffaloes
Disturbs the days debate… nearby a gang of crows
Attack the fruit the wee truck drops
Outside the beauty parlour,
Next door, each side, two little shops
Sell Lay’s ‘Magic Masala’
To smiling schoolgirls in white tops,
While the rickshawala
Waits to transport them to the school convent
I sat, & smiled, & watched, as innocent
Life seems in such a quiet place
Where venture’d, I, this youth,
In some made race thro’ time & space,
A child faced with life’s truth
Existences thrive everywhere – beware the bear’s buck tooth!
Sanapur
January
2009
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