Haq, Kaiser (ed);
Contemporary Indian poetry
Ohio State University Press, 1990, 187 pages
ISBN 0814205011, 9780814205013
topics: | poetry | anthology | india | english
This anthology from 1990 includes many poets who have appeared in other anthologies - the usual susects tries to cast a wide net, including J. Birjepatil (doesn't work for me) and Shanta Acharya (I like some of her stuff, see below). On the whole, the number of poems that worked for me are limited. Missing are Agha Shahid Ali, Sujata Bhatt. The poets are presented alphabetically, which seems rather unimaginative. the book has an excellent getup - good paper, binding etc. the poems have breathing room. it's hard to find nowadays; i was lucky to find it for $4.50 from an US used book store.
(b. 1953, now in London) Cramped in a corner, I ride a bus to Char Minar. Bursting bodies press on me as strangeness begs familiarity in sharing a hard, narrow seat. I feel the soft, wrinkled skin of an old Hyderabadi begum leaning to the window for fresh air, gasping curses on Allah for her plight. The mother with child at her breast squats near my feet, quite content: two little dirty hands tug innocently the edge of my crumpled shawl. Before I mingle again in the crowd of Char Minar, two sunken eyes offer me eternity in a begging bowl, promising me a reserved seat in the crowded bus to heaven, provided I pay the commission. (online at http://www.shantaacharya.com/thisthat.htm)
Downstairs the aunts discuss the drought It's so hot the crickets in the gul-mohur tree Have gone dry in the throat. There is no one hawking oranges In the street an auto-rickshaw choking Towards the hospital Ryots on their way to the Marwari moneylender Squat under the gul-mohur tree Their turbans lined with dust. There's not a sign of cloud From the bridge of their forehead To as far as the town's boundary
above my head clusters of virgin breasts of peasant women kneeling over graves for boons. The white sun hurls its red shafts through the sparse leaves to singe my left toe. I assume another stance to dodge the inevitable. A snake doodles its neutral course along a dry bed of cacti. The wind that soughs through this maze has no assonance -- only the rasp of an alligator's tail lashing the sand. This summer may never end.
My wife snores. My son's dream fingers have reached the sideboard's top-shelf for Cadbury. The sky grins through a handful of stars while I hold the defiant pills in my torpid hand. I'm a double agent. I'll drug my watch dog to burgle my own house. I know where my wife's secrets lie sealed. Each night 1 hear the same tattoo in my skull's chamber. I have counted all the stars over my terrace. The steel bars in my neighbour's balcony are twenty-one and three suburban freight trains rumble past the rail-crossing between two and four. Darkness now snaps at the seams. A hymn floats across the sky like a bird's warble. And somewhere down the lane a hand-pump creaks - the milkman's bottle jingles at my doorstep. I must walk through the day's fire to let another moon demolish me.
these five hills are the five demons that khandoba killed says the priest's son a young boy who comes along as your guide as the schools have vacations do you really believe that story you ask him he doesn't reply but merely looks uncomfortable shrugs and looks away and happens to notice a quick wink of a movement in a scanty patch of scruffy dry grass burnt brown in the sun and says look there's a butterfly there
Here I live in a garbage can The pile grows bigger each week with the broken homes splintered all around. A black cat chases a shadow down the passageway: its whiskers presage another snowstorm. The white of the negro maid's eyeballs is the only clean thing here, besides, of course, the quart gallon carton of milk squatting at my door. They wouldn't believe it here that Ganges water can work miracles: in spite of the cartloads of dead men's ashes and bones— daily offerings to the river. I open each morning my neighbour's Times, whisked away from his door before he stirs. Gloved hands leave no fingerprints. And a brisk review of all our yesterdays is no sin. En route to perdition I sometimes stop at Grand Central to piss. Where else can one ease one's nerves when the bladder fills up like a child's balloon? In the Gents, each in his stall, we stand reduced to the thing itself. Questions catapult in the air: 'Are you a Puerto Rican? A Jamaican? A Red Indian?' I look for the feathers on my skull, a band around my forehead. And mumble, 'No, a brown Indian, from the land of Gandhi.' The stranger briskly zips his soul and vanishes past the shoeblack, who turns to shine a lanky New Yorker swaddled in the high chair like Lincoln. Incidentally, there are no beggars at Grand Central. Only eyes, eyes, eyes, staring at lamp-posts. Back in my den after dusk I bandaid the day's bruises. Outside the window perches the grey sky, an ominous bird wrapped in nuclear fog. At night the Voices of America break in upon my tenuous frequency, intoning the same fact three times, till the sediment grips the Hudson's soul. But my soul is still my own. For, every Sunday morning, I descend into purgatory, the basement where three laundromats gulp down nickels, to wash all our sins. But the brown of my skin defies all bleachers. How long will this eclipse last? This is a tightened version from the initial draft source: http://www.oocities.com/varnamala/shiv.html see interview at: The Hindu
Between them a silence occupies the whole place. Slowly my body has walked into deep water. As a boy I learned to come in by the back door. Sad houses now, clean and leaning against one another, full of sleep. My old rag elephant is smothered with small screams. From the dark surface, waving like grass- When the last boat crosses the lake.
What's in my father's house is not mine. In his eyes, dirty and heavy as rainwater flowing into earth, is the ridicule my indifference quietly left behind: the sun has imperceptibly withdrawn and nothing stirs there except for two discoloured kites and the whisper of an old myth in the clouds. Thinking to escape his beliefs I go to meet the spectre of belief, a looming shadow the colour of mud, watery and immense as the Ganga. It is thus the odor of a captured contry lingers my father's voice echoing wearily from bone to bone, comes to rest on my eye like a speck of mold. And I have taken my likeness down from his walls and hidden it in the river's roots a colourless monsoon eaten away by what has drifted between us.
My native city rose from sea, Its littered frontiers wet and dark. Time came too soon to disembark And rain like buckshot sprayed my head. My dreams, I thought, lacked dignity. So I got drunk and went to bed. But dreamt of you all night, and felt More lonely at the break of day And trod, to brush the dream away, The misted pavements where rain fell. There the consumptive beggars knelt, Voiced with the thin voice of a shell. The records that those pavements keep, Bronze relics from the beggar's lung, Oppress me, fastening my tongue. Seawhisper in the rocky bay Derides me, and when I find sleep, The parakeets shriek that away. Except in you I have no rest, For always with you I am safe: Who now am far, and mime the deaf Though you call gently as a dove. Yet each day turns to wander west: And every journey ends in love.
It is night alone helps to achieve a lucid exclusiveness Time that had dimmed your singular form by its harsh light now makes recognition possible through the opaque lens. Touch brings the body into focus restores colour to inert hands, till the skin takes over, erasing angularities, and the four walls turn on a strand of hair.
Uncomprehending day, I tie my loss to leaves And watch them drift away. The regions are as far, But the whole quadrant sees The single generous star. Yet under star or sun, For forest tree or leaf The year has wandered on. And for the single cells Held in their sentient skins An image shapes and tells: In wreathes of ache and strain The bent rheumatic potter Constructs his forms from pain.
Shanta Acharya (b.1953, Cuttack -> London)
After Great Struggle 3
Trees 4
Busride To Char Minar 5
Meena Alexander (b.1951 -> NY)
No Autumn In My Country 9
House Of A Thousand Doors 11
The house has a thousand doors
to keep out snakes,
toads, water rats
...
Everything Strikes Loose 12
South Of The Nilgiris 14
Jaysinh Birjepatil (b.1933, Baroda -> Vermont)
Hunter Gracchus 17
The Secunderabad Club 18
The Gateway Of India, Bombay 19
Hill Of Devi 20
The British Cemetery At Surat 22
G. S. Sharat Chandra (1938-2000, Mysore -> Kansas)
April in nanjangud 27
Communions; For Robert Bly 28
Photographs 29
Brothers 29
Mount Pleasant, U. S. A. 30
Tirumalai 31
For All Aliens 32
Keki N. Daruwalla (b.1937, ex-IPS, Delhi)
Railroad Reveries 35
To Gandhi 37
Vignette I 39
Hawk 40
The Mistress 43
To My Daughter Rookzain 45
Kamala Das (1934-2009, bi-lingual Malayalam)
The Invitation 49
The Looking-glass 51
The Freaks 52
The Old Playhouse 53
The Stone Age 54
Eunice De Souza (b.1940, Pune/Mumbai)
Sweet Sixteen 57
Varca, 1942 58
Forgive Me, Mother 59
Imtiaz Dharker (b.1954 Lahore, Scotland, Mumbai)
Purdah I 63
from Purdah II 65
Nissim Ezekiel (1924-2004, Mumbai)
Background, Casually 69
from Passion Poems 72
2. Monsoon
3. The Sanskrit Poets
4. On Giving Reasons
The Patriot 73
from Nudes 1978 : 2, 9 10 75
from Latter-day Psalms: 1, 7, 10 (concluding) 77
Night Of The Scorpion 80
Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher 82
Enterprise 83
Arun Kolatkar (1932-2004, Mumbai)
The Bus 87
An Old Woman 88
The Priest's Son 89
A Kind Of A Cross 90
A Low Temple 91
Between Jejuri And The Railway Station 92
from The Railroad Station:
2. The Station Dog 94
4. The Station Master 94
5. Vows 95
Shiv K. Kumar (b. 1921 Lahore / UK / Hyderabad)
Days in New York 99
Mango Grove 101
School Children During Lunch Break 102
the coffin clenches its teeth
though beneath its lid the grasshopper
is still poised for a curvet
Insomnia 103
Lord Venkateswara's Temple 104
Jayanta Mahapatra (b. 1928 Cuttack)
A Twilight Poem 107
Hands 108
Life Signs 109
The Lost Children Of America 110
Again, One Day, Walking by the River 115
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra (b. 1947 Mumbai / Allahabad)
Index Of First Lines 119
Canticle For My Son 121
Engraving of a Bison on Stone 122
Company Period 123
The Roys 124
Dom Moraes (b. 1939 -> NYC)
Kanheri Caves 129
Landscape Painter 130
Autobiography 131
A Letter 132
The Island 134
Gone Away 137
From Tibet 138
Prophet 140
Letter To My Mother 141
R. Parthasarathy (b. 1934 -> US)
from Exile: 1, 3, 6 145
from Trial: 7 148
from Homecoming: 14 149
Delhi 150
Gieve Patel (b. 1940, Mumbai)
Naryal Purnima (august 1965) 155
O My Very Own Cadaver! 158
The Multitude Comes To A Man 159
Bodyfears, Here I Stand 159
License 160
Attipat Krishnaswami Ramanujan (b. 1929, Mysore -> Chicago)
A River 163
Some Indian Uses Of History On A Rainy Day 165
The Last Of The Princes 167
Death And The Good Citizen 168
Alien 170
Connect! 171
Chicago Zen 172
Vikram Seth (b.1952 Delhi / US)
Research In Jiangsu Province 177
Profiting 179
Moonlight 180
Kaiser Haq was educated at Dhaka University and received his Ph.D. at Warwick. He was a commonwealth scholar at Warwick, senior Fulbright scholar, fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and professor of English at Dhaka University. He also fought in the Bangladesh war of independence as a commissioned officer. He is currently a poet and a professor of English at Dhaka University. see this interview