Saha, Subhash (ed.);
An anthology of Indian Love poetry
Prayer books / Firma KLM 1976
ISBN NIL
topics: | poetry | india | romance | 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. Clearly an intense selection, but suffers from production problems (Writer's Workshop).
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. * 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. * Ashmi Ahluwalia's Writing Love (2010) a selection of modern poets, mostly 21st c. Tonight, I recall a lust that stormed as comets crashing clouds, as the helplessness ...
p. 20 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.
There's sunshine in the garden There are flowers in the hall At your gate a lovesick beast Is breaking down the wall. p.22
p.26
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 mine 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.
1 A knock on the door: She entered. Undressed Quietly before the mirror Of my hands. Eyes Drowned in the skull As flesh hardened to stone. For many days the room Tasted of blood and flowers. 2 It's you I commemmorate Tonight. The sweet water Of your flesh I draw With my arms, as from a well, Its taste as ever as on the night of Capricorn. 3 It's two in the morning: my thoughts turn to you. With lamp and pen I blow The dust off my past. Come in and see For yourself; It's taken me Thirty odd years. Now, a small hand will do. p.27
p.28 I The body sputters : your flesh was the glass that cupped its hands over me. Hours glowed to incandescence. An uneasy world swarmed around us. Now, only the thought of you (live coals I blow on) burns distance to a stub. II [...] Evening disfigures vision : stones of the day turn phantoms. But in the dark hands and lips . have marked the spot they touched. Still as crockery, these two, rinsed and dried after half-a-day's legitimate use.
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. p.34
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.
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. [p.54]
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.
p.62 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 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 Ghanshyamn 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.
Subhas C. Saha 8 The embrace
Subhas C. Saha 9 Man & Woman
P.Lal 10 The simplest Love
P. Lal 10 The bee's love
Subhas C. Saha 11 Seven stages of love
Pritish Nandy 15 Paean
Pritish Nandy 15 Till you came
Pritish Nandy 17 I love you
Subhas C. Saha 18 Harmonious You
Saleem Peerardina 19 Running aground (with G silent)
Ashoke Mammen 20 When you undress
Aru Dutt 21 Morning Serenade
Sarojini Naidu 22 If you call me
Suniti Namjoshi 22 Courtship
AK Ramanujan 25 Still another view of Greece
Pritish Nandy 26 Unbutton your fragrant clothes of sleep
Pritish Nandy 26 Wild horses rage in your tresses]
R. Parthasarathy 27 The night of Capricorn
R. Parthasarathy 28 Touch
Keki Daruwalla 30 Love among the pines
Pradip Sen 33 My love
Subhas C. Saha 33 The loneliness of a betrayed lover
Gauri Deshpande 34 The quest
Gauri Deshpande 34 I wanted to weep
Gauri Deshpande 35 On a lost love
Gauri Deshpande 35 Souvenir
Mary Erulkar 37 A Leavetaking
Suresh Kohli 37 That night
R. de L. Furtado 38 The moment
Kshitij Mohan 38 An ordinary thing
Sashti Brata 39 Wreckage at dawn
Nissim Ezekiel 40 Progress
Kamala Das 40 Autumn Leaves
Kamala Das 41 Sunset, blue bird
Manmohan Ghose 41 Can it be?
Michael Madhusudan Dutt 42 I love'd thee
Govin Chunder Dutt 43 Song
Bhikaji Maneckji 44 The ageing lovers
A. Madhavan 45 Kingdoms
Ela Singh 46 Two poems
Kuldip Singh 47 We talked late into the night
Kamala Das 51 Radha
Nissim Ezekiel 51 Cry
Suniti Namjoshi 52 Beauty & the beast
Harindranath Chattopadhyay 52 Fire
Dom Moraes 53 Being married
Nissim Ezekiel 54 Marriage
Kamala Das 55 A losing battle
Kamala Das 55 A request
Nissim Ezekiel 56 for Elkana
Sarojini. Naidu 60 Raksha bandhan
Ira De 60 The Hunt
Subhas C. Saha 61 For a friend
Kamala Das 62 Ghanashyam
Subhas C. Saha 64 If love had been the only song
link: review by Prema Nandakumar
http://yabaluri.org/TRIVENI/CDWEB/reviewsjul81.htm
Alas! for [Saha's] choice of theme and poets to present
An Anthology of Indo-English Love Poetry. The usual bloodless
middle-class indulgences in sex (neither platonic nor passionate) are
served as stale wordy pakoras. Even such well-known names as P .Lal,
Pritish Nandy and A. K. Ramanujan fail to evoke our enthusiasm.
I am not surprised that Nirad Chaudhuri often fulminates against the
"oily smiles and sniggers of the Anglicised Hindus" appearing "smart"
with their knowledge of Western erotica. Fortunately, the volume is
redeemed by the presence of Sarojini Naidu’s brief "Raksha Bandhan" and
Aru Dutt’s translation of Victor Hugo’s "Morning Serenade."