Saha, Subhash (ed.);
An anthology of Indian Love poetry,
Prayer books / Firma KLM 1976
topics: | poetry | india | love | anthology | english
love is the reigning emotion in poetry, and it rarely fails. Subhas Saha's anthology while a bit spotty at points (his own efforts are largely mediocre), presents, on the whole, a richer set of likeable poetry than many others.
Anthologies differ in the mood, period, and cultural landscape they cover. Here is a quick review of some anthologies of Indian love poetry, * Tambimuttu's Indian love poems (1967) restricts itself to the ancient and medieval, vestiges of the colonial orientalist. * Subhash Saha's Anthology of Indian love poetry (1976) is focused on modern English poetry. Clearly an intense selection, which is quite good but suffers from production problems (Writer's Workshop). * Jerry Pinto and Arundhathi Subramaniam's Confronting love (2005). only modern English poets, focusing on relatively less well-known pieces. A great volume to discover new work. * Meena Alexander's Indian love poems (2005) covers the gamut from ancient sanskrit to modern vernacular. Undoubtedly the finest both in terms of selection and the small, pocket-worthy getup.
When you undress, I sit seeing the colours of the clothes you slip over your head or move your legs in lines of light to step out of, I watch you darkly growing towards me, the last glinting of arms and the cupped tense belly. The light curves on your neck, gathering as in a whirlpool, your sinking eyes the ringed flutter of your throat, the hair on your head counting the days of my death. I know nothing of love, of the questions you ask I know nothing. I know the colours falling from you, the lights caught in your body, the darkness you hold to my coming. I come as a child, sinking.
unbutton your fragrant clothes of sleep and come to me
I will watch your bare white breasts burning through the black
tresses of desire
and I will throw your silent wounds into the sky
where purple birds will tear you into a woman and lilac shadows
will cover your wounds
with the naked touch of dusk on their wings
there will be the feigned blue
of the Godavari in your sleep as
you will draw your legs around mind and I will search for fear
and the secret syllable of grass
between your breasts when you
will gently unbutton the fragrant clothes of sleep and come to me
and I shall tear the night from your womb.
Without wondering I opened the door to your knock and you slipped the wedge between misery and content. Slightly unwelcome, taciturn, you moved in and we lived on in disharmony. Slowly, silently the green came into trees, your harsh eyes ate into the decay of my dreams and the sound of your nightpacing grew in my bloodstream. You are gone now, The perfect mouth that kissed my words no longer by. And as the clouds heap and heap upon the west I lie empty, barren and bereft.
3
I am the earth
Vast deep and black
and I receive
the first rain
sweet, generous,
lashing, throbbing;
its smell forever in my blood
its imprint deep
within my quick.
Yellow daisies burst out
on my breast and thigh
at its very touch.
[for a similar thought, see: Mallika Sengupta: Earth goddess,
Unsevered Tongue (also in kathAmAnabI )]
I just glimpsed the face in passing Only mildly familiar, not really known And wondered at the sudden gust of pain. After an hour or two it came back again : It was a face very like your own -- Your son or daughter, I'm certain -- And so meaningless is the drift of years That the only residue is the habit of pain.
In the darkened room a woman cannot find her reflection in the mirror waiting as usual at the edge of sleep In her hands she holds the oil lamp whose drunken yellow flames know where her lonely body hides.
How can my love hold him when the other Flaunts a gaudy lust and is lioness To his beast? Men are worthless, to trap them Use the cheapest bait of all, but never Love, which in a woman must mean tears And a silence in the blood.
When I die Do not throw the meat and bones away But pile them up And Let them tell By their smell What life was worth On this earth In the end.
Ghanshyam, You have like a koel built your nest in the arbour of my heart. My life, until now a sleeping jungle is at last astir with music. You lead me along a route I have never known before But at each turn when I near you Like a spectral flame you vanish. The flame of my prayer-lamp holds captive my future I gaze into the red eye of death The hot stare of truth unveiled. Life is moisture Life is water, semen and blood. Death is drought Death is the hot sauna leading to cool rest-rooms Death is the last, lost sob of the relative Beside the red-walled morgue. O Shyam, my Ghanshyam With words I weave a raiment for you With songs a sky With such music I liberate in the oceans their fervid dances We played once a husk-game, my lover and I His body needing mine, His ageing body in its pride needing the need for mine And each time his lust was quietned And he turned his back on me In panic I asked Dont you want me any longer dont you want me Dont you dont you In love when the snow slowly began to fall Like a bird I migrated to warmer climes That was my only method of survival In this tragic game the unwise like children play And often lose [? lose in] At three in the morning I wake trembling from dreams of a stark white loneliness, Like bleached b0ones cracking in the desert-sun was my loneliness, And each time my husband, His mouth bitter with sleep, Kisses, mumbling to me of love. But if he is you and I am you Who is loving who Who is the husk who the kernel Where is the body where is the soul You come in strange forms And your names are many. Is it then a fact that I love the disguise and the name more than I love you? Can I consciously weaken bonds? The child's umbilical cord shrivels and falls But new connections begin, new traps arise And new pains Ghanashyam, The cell of the eternal sun, The blood of the eternal fire The hue of the summer-air, I want a peace that I can tote Like an infant in my arms I want a peace that will doze In the whites of my eyes when I smile The ones in saffron robes told me of you [? is saffron] And when they left I thought only of what they left unsaid Wisdom must come in silence When the guests have gone The plates are washed And the lights put out Wisdom must steal in like a breeze From beneath the shuttered door Shyam o Ghanshyam You have like a fisherman cast your net in the narrows Of my mind And towards you my thoughts today Must race like enchanted fish... --- Includes generous selection of Kamala Das.
SCS p.8,11(3) P.Lal p.10(2)
P.Nandy p.15-17(3) SCS p. 18 Saleem Peerardina p.19 Ashoke Mammen p.20 Aru Dutt 20 S. Naidu S. Namjoshi 22;
AK Ramanujan Greece p.25 P. Nandy 26(2) R. Parthasarathy 27-28(2) Keki Daruwalla 30 Agony Despair Loneliness: Pradip Sen 33 SCS 33 Gauri Deshpande 34-35(4); Mary Erulkar 37 Suresh Kohli 37 R. de L. Furtado 38; Kshitij Mohan 38 Sashti Brata 39 Nissim Ezekiel 40 progress; Kamala Das 40-41 Auitumn Leaves, sunset blue bird Manmohan Ghose 41; MM Dutt 42 I love'd thee Govin Chunder Dutt 43 Bhikaji Maneckji 44 A. Madhavan 45 Ela Singh 46 Kuldip Singh 47
Kamala Das 51 Radha 55 A losing battle 55 A request; Nissim Ezekiel 51 Cry 54 Marriage 56 Suniti Namjoshi 52 Beauty & beast; Harindranath Chattopadhyay 52 Fire Dom Moraes 53;
S. Naidu 60 Raksha bandhan Ira De 60 Kamala Das Ghanashyam 62 SCS 64 “Still barred thy doors! The far east glows, The morning wind blows fresh and free. Should not the hour that wakes the rose Awaken also thee? No longer sleep, Oh listen new! I wait and weep, But where art thou?” review: http://yabaluri.org/TRIVENI/CDWEB/reviewsjul81.htm