The Prison Cell

It is possible…
It is possible at least sometimes…
It is possible especially now
To ride a horse
Inside a prison cell
And run away…

It is possible for prison walls
To disappear,
For the cell to become a distant land
Without frontiers:

What did you do with the walls?
I gave them back to the rocks.
And what did you do with the ceiling?
I turned it into a saddle.
And your chain?
I turned it into a pencil.

The prison guard got angry.
He put an end to the dialogue.
He said he didn’t care for poetry,
And bolted the door of my cell.

He came back to see me
In the morning.
He shouted at me:

Where did all this water come from?
I brought it from the Nile.
And the trees?
From the orchards of Damascus.
And the music?
From my heartbeat.

The prison guard got mad.
He put an end to my dialogue.
He said he didn’t like my poetry,
And bolted the door of my cell.

But he returned in the evening:

Where did this moon come from?
From the nights of Baghdad.
And the wine?
From the vineyards of Algiers.
And this freedom?
From the chain you tied me with last night.

The prison guard grew so sad…
He begged me to give him back
His freedom.

~ Mahmoud Darwish [1941-2008] ~

Translated by Ben Bennani

On his Blindness

.

When I consider how my light is spent
     Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
     And that one talent which is death to hide
     Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent
 To serve therewith my Maker, and present
     My true account, lest he returning chide,
     "Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
     I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
 That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need
    Either man's work or his own gifts: who best
    Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
    And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
    They also serve who only stand and wait."      

 ~ John Milton ~    .

From the Frontier of Writing

The tightness and the nilness round that space

when the car stops in the road, the troops inspect

its make and number and, as one bends his face

towards your window, you catch sight of more

on a hill beyond, eyeing with intent

down cradled guns that hold you under cover

and everything is pure interrogation

until a rifle motions and you move

with guarded unconcerned acceleration --

a little emptier, a little spent

as always by that quiver in the self,

subjugated, yes, and obedient.

So you drive on to the frontier of writing

where it happens again. The guns on tripods;

the sergeant with his on-off mike repeating

data about you, waiting for the squawk

of clearance; the marksman training down

out of the sun upon you like a hawk.

And suddenly you're through, arraigned yet freed,

as if you'd passed from behind a waterfall

on the black current of a tarmac road

past armor-plated vehicles, out between

the posted soldiers flowing and receding

like tree shadows into the polished windscreen.

~  Seamus Heaney  ~

 —–     —–      —–

I found this poem some months back when it was still warm in Delhi and it seemed to remind me of the warmth of the winter sun. The warmth of recognising a feeling so familiar that it remains cold and unrecognised, the satisfaction of finding someone who could give words and emotions to that journey I had been taking each week for the past few months.

The Burning Ravana in Autumn Twilight

.

The sun flirted with the autumn evening,

Disappearing behind scattered clouds,

As the hills rolled darkly

And lights warmed distant homes.

 

In the far reaching horizon,

The sky swirled from orange

To the wonderous, heavenly shades

Of twilight.

 

The half moon brightened up,

And hung by invisible bonds

From the opening stars,

Exaggerated twilight.

 

The crickets started their monotony,

The pines and bushes grew dark

Radiating jungle fears

And flickering firefly lights.

 

Two birds, worm weary,

Sailed the darkening expanse

Overhead, leaving the day

And its finds behind.

 

Leaving only the burning Ravana,

His cannonade of bursting crackers

Raging inferno and cumulus smoke,

Lonely in that autumn twilight.

 

~Aniket Alam~

 

—

I wrote this poem exactly 20 years ago. Well almost. Dussehra fell on 2 October in 1987. I was in class 11 at that time, studying in Central School in Shimla. We lived in the Himachal Pradesh University campus where my father taught political science. Next to our block of flats was a large playing field, the far end of which hosted the colourful effigies of Ravan and his brothers on Dussehra each year.

This is not a great poem and I have refrained from dumping my teenage exeburance on this site. Till now. But recently, in a crass display of nepotism and self-advertisement, I have lowered the poetic benchmarks for my own verses and decided to publish them here. Most of the two hundred odd poems I wrote are very embarrassing and you will be spared them. Some are not that bad. This being one of them. The reason I still like this poem is for the sense of loss it has at the burning of the demon king. Plus that it reminds me of a particularly fond personal memory…

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The Unfinished Song

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There are five thousand of us here
in this small part of the city.
We are five thousand.
I wonder how many we are in all
in the cities and in the whole country?
Here alone
are ten thousand hands which plant seeds
and make the factories run.
How much humanity
exposed to hunger, cold, panic, pain,
moral pressure, terror and insanity?
Six of us were lost
as if into starry space.
One dead, another beaten as I could never have believed
a human being could be beaten.
The other four wanted to end their terror
one jumping into nothingness,
another beating his head against a wall,
but all with the fixed stare of death.
What horror the face of fascism creates!
They carry out their plans with knife-like precision.
Nothing matters to them.
To them, blood equals medals,
slaughter is an act of heroism.
Oh God, is this the world that you created,
for this your seven days of wonder and work?

Within these four walls only a number exists
which does not progress,
which slowly will wish more and more for death.
But suddenly my conscience awakes
and I see that this tide has no heartbeat,
only the pulse of machines
and the military showing their midwives’ faces
full of sweetness.
Let Mexico, Cuba and the world
cry out against this atrocity!
We are ten thousand hands
which can produce nothing.
How many of us in the whole country?

The blood of our President, our compañero,
will strike with more strength than bombs and machine guns!
So will our fist strike again!
How hard it is to sing
when I must sing of horror.
Horror which I am living,
horror which I am dying.
To see myself among so much
and so many moments of infinity
in which silence and screams
are the end of my song.
What I see, I have never seen
What I have felt and what I feel
Will give birth to the moment …

~ Victor Jara ~

(translated by Joan Jara, his wife.)

Chilean writer, theatre director, poet – songwriter, singer, communist.

This poem / song was written when he was held in the Chile Stadium with 5,000 other opponents of the US backed coup d’etat against the elected Government of Chile. Arrested on 11 September 1973 – the day of the coup d’etat – he was killed by machine guns on 15 September, 1973. But as Pete Seeger reminded us, “As long as we sing his songs, as long as his courage can inspire us to greater courage, Victor Jara will never die”.

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Song of the Reed

.

‘From the reed-flute hear what tale it tells;
What plaint it makes of absence’ ills:

“From jungle-bed since me they tore,
Men’s, women’s eyes have wept right sore.
My breast I tear and rend in twain,
To give, through sighs, vent to my pain.
Who’s from his home snatched far away,
Longs to return some future day.
I sob and sigh in each retreat,
Be’t joy or grief for which men meet.
They fancy they can read my heart;
Grief’s secrets I to none impart.
My throes and moans form but one chain,
Men’s eyes and ears catch not their train.
Though soul and body be as one,
Sight of his soul hath no man won.’

~ From “The Mesnevi of Mevl’n’ Jel’lu’d-din Muhammed er-Rumi. Book the First” ~

Translated by James W. Redhouse.
(London, 1881).

I got this wonderful poem from Vinayak’s blog. A very nice blog to keep a feed on…

Memento

.
Like a reminder of this life
of trams, sun, sparrows,
and the flighty uncontrolledness
of streams leaping like thermometers,
and because ducks are quacking somewhere
above the crackling of the last, paper-thin ice,
and because children are crying bitterly
(remember children’s lives are so sweet!)
and because in the drunken, shimmering starlight
the new moon whoops it up,
and a stocking crackles a bit at the knee,
gold in itself and tinged by the sun,
like a reminder of life,
and because there is resin on tree trunks,
and because I was madly mistaken
in thinking that my life was over,
like a reminder of my life -
you entered into me on stockinged feet.
You entered – neither too late nor too early -
at exactly the right time, as my very own,
and with a smile, uprooted me
from memories, as from a grave.
And I, once again whirling among
the painted horses, gladly exchange,
for one reminder of life,
all its memories.

~Yevgeny Yevtushenko~
(1974)

Translated by Arthur Boyars amd Simon Franklin

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Epistle to Neruda

.
Superb,
Like a seasoned lion,
Neruda buys bread in the shop.
He asks for it to be wrapped in paper
And solemly puts it under his arm:
“Let someone at least think
that at some time
I bought a book…”
Waving his hand in farewell,
like a Roman
rather dreamily royal,
in the air scented with mollusks,
oysters,
rice,
he walks with the bread through Valparaiso.
He says:
” Eugenio, look!
You see–
over there, among the puddles and garbage,
standing up under the red lamps
stands Bilbao-with the soul
of a poet — in bronze.
Bilbao was a tramp and a rebel.
Originally
they set up the monument, fenced off
by a chain, with due pomp, right in the center,
although the poet had lived in the slums.
Then there was some minor overthrow or other,
and the poet was thrown out, beyond the gates.
Sweating,
they removed
the pedestal
to a filthy little red-light district.
And the poet stood,
as the sailor’s adopted brother,
against a background
you might call native to him.
Our Bilbao loved cracking jokes.
He would say:
‘On this best of possible planets
there are prostitutes and politutes –
as I’m a poet,
I prefer the former.’”
And Neruda comments, with a hint of slyness:
“A poet is
beyond the rise and fall of values.
It’s not hard to remove us from the center,
but the spot where they set us down
becomes the center!”
I remember that noon,
Pablo,
as I tune my transistor at night, by the window,  now,
when a wicked war with the people of Chile
brings back the smell of Spain.
Playing about at a new overthrow,
politutes in generals’ uniforms
wanted, whichever way they could,
to hustle your poetry out of sight.
But today I see Neruda–
he’s always right in the center
and, not faltering,
he carries his poetry to the people
as simply and calmly
as a loaf of bread.
Many poets follow false paths,
but if the poet is with the people to the bitter end,
like a conscience-
then nothing
can possibly overthrow poetry.

~Yevgeny Yevtushenko~
(1973)

Translated by Arthur Boyars amd Simon Franklin

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The Faithless Wife

.
So I took her to the river
believing she was a maiden,
but she already had a husband.
It was on St. James night
and almost as if I was obliged to.
The lanterns went out
and the crickets lighted up.
In the farthest street corners
I touched her sleeping breasts
and they opened to me suddenly
like spikes of hyacinth.
The starch of her petticoat
sounded in my ears
like a piece of silk
rent by ten knives.
Without silver light on their foliage
the trees had grown larger
and a horizon of dogs
barked very far from the river.

Past the blackberries,
the reeds and the hawthorne
underneath her cluster of hair
I made a hollow in the earth
I took off my tie,
she too off her dress.
I, my belt with the revolver,
She, her four bodices.
Nor nard nor mother-o’-pearl
have skin so fine,
nor does glass with silver
shine with such brilliance.
Her thighs slipped away from me
like startled fish,
half full of fire,
half full of cold.
That night I ran
on the best of roads
mounted on a nacre mare
without bridle stirrups.

As a man, I won’t repeat
the things she said to me.
The light of understanding
has made me more discreet.
Smeared with sand and kisses
I took her away from the river.
The swords of the lilies
battled with the air.

I behaved like what I am,
like a proper gypsy.
I gave her a large sewing basket,
of straw-colored satin,
but I did not fall in love
for although she had a husband
she told me she was a maiden
when I took her to the river.

~Federico García Lorca~

I am explaining a few things…

.

you are going to ask:and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them fullof apertures and birds?
i’ll tell you all the news.

i lived in a suburb,
a suburb of madrid,with bells,
and clocks,and trees.

from there you could look out
over castille’s dry face:
a leather ocean.
my house was called
the house of flowers,because in every cranny
geraniums burst:it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
remember,raul?
eh,rafael?federico,do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of june drowned flowers in your mouth?
brother,my brother!!
everything
loud with big voices,the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of arguelleswith its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres,litres,the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roof with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine,frenzied ivory of potatoes
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.

and one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings–
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
bandits with planes and moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children.

and the blood of children ran through streets
without fuss,like children’s blood.

jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the viper would abominate!

face to face with you i have seen the blood
of spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives! treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of spain
spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes.
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull’s eye of your hearts.

and you’ll ask:why doesn’t his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and great volcanoes of his native land?

come and see the blood in the streets.
come and see
the blood in the streets.
come and see
the blood in the streets!!

~ Pablo Neruda ~