topics: |  poetry | indian-english

The poet as translator

Satchidanandan is undoubtedly one of our finest poets today. He is one of the few English poets who cut his poetic teeth in the rural Indian milieu - in the Malayalam tradition.

However, he was able to reach out to a larger audience also because he has also been for many years a very competent poet in English as well, and he was able to transcreate his poetic impulse into this cross-border language. Thus, he is one of the poets represented in Language for a new century by Tina Chang etal, 2008.

Sadly, obscurity remains the fate of so many other poets who struggle in the clutches of indifferent translators.

In this volume, many poems are lightly reworked. In an earlier incarnation, he had written:

	The poem [now] cleared his throat
	and Gandhi [glanced] at him sideways

which is now more direct as:

	The poem cleared his throat
	and Gandhi looked at him sideways

There are many other such small edits, which are informed by a number of
friends, named in the introduction.

The poems

On the whole though the poems are all very strong as English poetry.

I do not think that the slight edits to the translations were that much
needed.  It is the power of the ideas that keep you alert - a world where
"even sunflowers have claws and fangs" (though how that may relate to
Sulekha's death is a more complex story).  True, there were some cases where
at translation was a bit infelicitous - e.g. in an earlier version:

	Who said
	that trees have ceased to follow
	wind's language?

Here "the wind's language" definitely is easier on the tongue.  But it is the
idea of a tree "following the language" of the wind remains the power behind
this line.

Most of the poems work by virtue of what vAmana would have called
arthaguNa - the emotional suggestion that is raises it to the level
of rasa, rather than shabdaguNa which would be more concerned with a
dropped article or the effects of sound.

Poet in the mirror

The poetic autobiography at the start (About Poetry , About Life) makes
for interesting reading.

	I write in love. Birds roost on my shoulders. Trees bend with flowers
	and fruits. Warring men hug one another. Language reveals its bottom
	like a crystal stream. My grief, hate, anger, sarcasm all get blessed
	with meaning.

But one wonders if all of it is true?

Andre Maurois once noted that all memoirs are marked by selective memory
and 'deliberate forgetfulness'.  One emphasizes what shows one in the best
light, omitting odious episodes. It is a genre marked by insincerity.

When a writer writes of his art, he cannot escape this folly.  Tagore
once said presciently of his art:

	one wonders if some parts are really true, or are they said because
	they would sound good.

The above lines for instance, does it come from some haunt of word
wizardry, the "combinatorial game" as Satchidanandan calls it.
He has an interesting definition of poetry:

	Poetry differs from prose not by following a metre or rhythm.
	The difference lies in its power to dissolve paradoxes and its way of
	imagining things into being and connecting words and memories...

"The power to dissolve paradox..." is it said because it sounds good, or is
there some truth in it?

One can argue ad nauseum on such fine issues.  But in the end, the power of
poetry lies with the reader, and I will leave it for her to decide.

Extracts

Granny

My granny was insane.
As her madness ripened into death,
my uncle, a miser,
kept her in our storeroom
wrapped in straw.

My granny dried up, burst;
her seeds flew out of the window.
The sun came, and the rain;
one seedling grew up into a tree,
whose lusts bore me.

Can I help writing poems
about monkeys with teeth of gold?
				[1973]


link: Hear Satchidanandan reading the original in Malayalam

Sulekha

			p.4

With so many wings, Sulekha,
what are you doing there?
The white robe of a divine bride,
white rose, white dreams: I see everything.

You are the foster-child of
sacrificial altars, the ancient
fragrance of intense springs,
the desperate, transparent, smile of glass.

Every night you come , borne on
the bitter winds of salt fields;
you show me your wounds
like mist, and sob.

The winter night trembling by the window
is pale like garlic.
The leaves of cancer that unfold in
your funeral pyre look brown.
The scent of palai and arali flowers dissolves
in the pungent smell of burning corpses.

You too should have sought shelter here,
In this moonlight, under this
mushroom of mist.
But that fat sticky beast that
inhabits the darkest of wells
stood between us. Was it
the same beast that entered
your innards and multiplied?

What was it the flames of the pyre
whispered in your tiny ears,
as they stroked your dead hairs
with fingers of gold?
What was the song the fire sang,
with you in his lap,
caressing and fondling you until
your bones exploded in a fit of passion?

Sulekha, you came into the world too early.
Even sunflowers have claws and fangs here.
Prisons open to receive patriots,
like the black books of judgement.
Sterile winds roll over
the broken bones of the just.

Be reborn one day on the fragrant earth
as the first shower raising
the stimulating scent of the rain-drenched soil.
Flow laughing like the water from the eves
beneath the neem tree on the courtyard.
Then a child will clap his hands and laugh
launching a paperboat on your breast.

A red-breast will fly above you
On his flushed wings, like an arrow.
That bird will be me.

			     			[1981]
			   (remembering a college-mate
				   who died of cancer)

Loving a woman

			p.26

To love a woman is
to resurrect her from stone,
to fondle her from tip to toe
until her blood frozen by a curse
is warmed by a dream.

To love a woman is
to turn her soot-laden day
into a skylark that breathes
the flower-dust of paradise;
to turn oneself into a tree in bloom
for her tired wings to rest at night.

To love a woman is
to set sail on a storm-swept sea
under an overcast sky
in search of a new continent;
to carry a red balsam
from your frontyard to an unseen shore
and plant it there

To love a woman is
to exchange the harshness of your muscles
for the tenderness of a flower,
to free yourself of the armour and the crown,
bare, cross another sky
and leave your flesh to the winds of
another planet, to another water.

To love a woman is
to help her unearth a ray-sharp sword
from her ancient scars
and lie pressing your heart on its blade
until you are drained of all your blood.

I have never loved a woman.

				[1992]


 	[This poem is informed by the legend of ahalyA, who was turned into
	stone after she was deluded into making love to indra.  it was only
	the touch of rAmA, after millenia, that resurrected her.

	In the book layout, unseemly superscripts take your attention away to
	such footnotes and interrupt the poem from telling its story. ]



	ahalyA comes to life at rAma's touch.
	gupta period sculpture from deogarh, UP
	(national museum, photo by Namit Arora)

Gandhi and Poetry

				p.28

One day a lean poem
reached Gandhi's ashram
to have a glimpse of the man.
Gandhi spinning away
his thread towards Rama
took no notice of the poem
waiting at his door,
ashamed hew was no a bhajan. 		

The poem cleared his throat		
and Gandhi looked at him sideways 	
through those glasses
that had seen Hell.
"Have you ever spun thread?" he asked,
"Ever pulled a scavenger's cart?
Ever stood in the smoke
of an early morning kitchen?		
Have you ever starved?"

The poem said: "I was born in the woods,
in a hunter's mouth.
A fisherman brought me up
in a cottage.
Yet I know no work, I only sing.	
First I sang in the courts:
then I was plump and handsome
but I am on the streets now,		
half-starved."

"That's better," Gandhi said
with a sly smile. "But you must
give up this habit
of speaking in Sanskrit at times.
Go to the fields, listen to
the peasants' speech."

The poem turned into a grain
and lay waiting in the fields
for the tiller to come
and upturn the virgin soil
moist with new rain.
				[1993]

from Lal Ded Speaks against Borders

				p.34

... clothes are borders
So I strip myself to attain my Shiva,
naked like the breeze over the lake.
My lips are wicks that burn,
my breasts, flowers
and my hips incense:
I am an offering.

Ask the peepal and the palash
the soul has no religion;
nature suckles everything

The blue sky
is the throat of the Neelkanth.

The panther in the city

			p.42

	The panther strayed into the city
	vainly hides behind the leafless
	electric posts.
	Thirsty, she confronts
	the streams of crowds.
	She is too wild still
	to be whipped into squatting
	on a circus chair
	to stare at visitors
	from a cage in a zoo
	or to hang meekly as a meatless skin
	from drawing-room walls.
	The city's busy, bright midnights
	scare her; breeze and birds
	bring silent tears into her eyes.
	A moon rises in the lake of her
	tears, a bird bathes in it
	and a woman sees her own image.

					[1996]

The Mad

				p.43

The mad have no caste
or religion. They transcend
gender, live outside
ideologies. We do not deserve
their innocence.

Their language is not of dreams
but of another reality. Their love
is moonlight. It overflows
on the full-moon day.

Looking up they see
gods we have never heard of. They are
shaking their wings when
we fancy they are
shrugging their shoulders. They hold
that even flies have souls
and the green god of grasshoppers
leaps up on thin legs.

At times they see trees bleed, hear
lions roaring from the streets. At times
they watch Heaven gleaming
in a kitten's eyes, just as
we do. But they alone can hear
ants sing in a chorus.

While patting the air
they are taming a cyclone
over the Mediterranean. With
their heavy tread, they stop
a volcano from erupting.

They have another measure
of time. Our century is
their second. Twenty seconds,
and they reach Christ; six more,
they are with the Buddha.

In a single day, they reach
the big bang at the beginning.

They go on walking restless, for
their earth is boiling still.

The mad are not
mad like us.
		[1996]

The drum

				p.56

Curious to find from where
the drum's sound came,
I once made a hole in its skin
and peeped inside.

There was a forest there,
beasts were roaming in the incessant rain,
the river as in spate, the wind
growing fiercer under the dark sky.
A savage god riding a bison
was sounding a horn.
Trembling, I turned back.
I was just four then.

Even now every time i hear a drum,
i reach a wild forest in pouring rain
on an island in the midst of an ocean
and wait there, for the tempest to cease,
the sun emerge alive from the roc's beak
and my companion
to arrive from the mainland
with flowers and a pen.
			[2000]

Who Said?

			p.73

Who said
that waiting is a
railway station in North Malabar?
That a dawn in uniform
will arrive there in a coffin?

Who said
that memory is a fragrant window
opening on ripe cornfields?
That our bodies grow cold
as the sun grows dim there?  			

Who said
that trees have ceased to follow
the wind's language?  That we must 			
conceal from lilies and rabbits
the news of the death of love?

Who said
that now noons will be heavy
like a drunkard's head? That
evenings will have sick hearts
like a lover's whispered songs?

Who said
that we are running barefoot over
red hot iron with a fistful
of childhood rain? That we will, at the end,
hand over our keys
		to the same rain?	

Who said
that men once dead grow younger
and then they enter another Time?
That all the birds that vanished   	
at sunrise will return
when the world ends?

Who said
that we would understand everything
with no one saying anything?
Yet we would not share			
anything we know with anyone?  		

					[2002]

Self

			p.125

My mother didn't believe
when, in 1945, I appeared to her
in a dream and told her
I would be born to her the following year.

My father recognised me
as soon as he saw
the mole below my left thumb.
But mother believed to the very end
that someone else had been born to her
masquerading as me.

Father and I pleaded with her,
but dreams are not reliable witnesses.
She went on waiting for that
promised son till she died

Only when she was reborn as my daughter
did she admit it had really been me.

But by then I had begun to doubt:
it was someone else's heart
beating within my body.

One day I will retrieve my heart;
my language too.

review: On a poetic cruise : Gopikrishnan Kottoor

	http://www.hindu.com/lr/2011/06/05/stories/2011060550140300.htm

The introduction showcases Satchidanandan's miniature autobiography, career
graph, interests in painting, cinema, literature, and how he was roused into
poetry inspired by Pollot, his beautiful village in Kerala.

There are places where the poet is enmeshed in clichés or the mundane

		I hug
		you with my eyes
		you caress me with your wounds
		I peel off your garments
		(...)
		I suck your lips (...)
		I rouse your nipples
		(Mon Amor) or You are
		reading poetry from the dais,
		with the same lips I had drunk from last night
		(Infinite).

It looks as though Satchidanandan's love poems need to be better
honed.

[AM: the "mon amor" is the only part that seems cliched; the event itself
seems interesting enough.]

The repetitive chants of names (Sulekha, Dotora, Fyodor) in the memorial
poems appear too monotonous. Another deterrent is the frequent throwing in of
names of people, and places into the poetic field ranging from Ezhuthachan to
Ritsos and from Rome to Gujarat. Allusions to names of flowers and plants in
Malayalam (manchadi, palai, arali) without footnotes create dark spots
especially as the poems are translations.

Contents

About Poetry , About Life  						ix

	I cannot tell from where poetry came to me; I had hardly any
	poet-predecessors.  Whenever I think about it, I hear the diverse
	strains of the incessant rains of my village... [opening lines]

	Poetry as I conceive it is no mere combinatorial game.  It rises up
	from the ocean of the unsayable to name the nameless and to give a
	voice to the voiceless.   ...

	Poetry differs from prose not by following a metre or rhythm.

	The difference lies in its power to dissolve paradoxes and its way of
	imagining things into being and connecting words and memories; rhyme
	and rhythm may, of course help evooke an atmosphere.  p. xvii


Granny							1
The Man Who Remembered Everything			2
Sulekha							4
The Prodigal Son					7
The Bread of the Poor					10
The Home and the Prison					12
The Western Canto					13
The Piper						20
The Corridor						21
The Box							22
My Body, a City						23
Loving a Woman						26
Gandhi and Poetry					28
The Northern Canto					30
Lal Ded Speaks against Borders				34
The Panther in the City					42
The Mad							43
No							45
Beginnings						47
Sins: The Roman Sequence				51
The Drum						56
To Prolong the Noon					57

Disquiet						59
	Father was a cloud
	whose dark back I rode;
	mother, a warm white brook
	that oozed milk and song.

Cactus							68
Mon Amour						69
Stammer							71
	(read this poem on Book Excerptise at Language for a new century
	by Tina Chang, Handal and Shankar 2008.
Who Said?						73
The Lullaby						75
Three Poems of Hope					77
On the Way to Shillong  				80
Gandhi and the Tree					81
Snail							83
Farewell						85
In Memory of a Swedish Evening  			86
Infinite						88
Misplaced Objects					102
Daughter						104
A Man with a Door					106
Old Women						108
The Last Goal						111
The Dance						113
The Prophet						117
The Corpse						120
Old Poems						121
A Report on Hell					123
Self							125
While I Write						127
That's All						129