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| Sudeep Sen |
KARGIL
Our street of smoke and fences, gutters gorged
with weed and reeking, scorching iron grooves //
of rusted galvanise, a dialect forged
from burning asphalt, and a sky that moves //
with thunderhead cumuli grumbling with rain, ….
— derek
walcott, Tiepolo’s Hound, Book One, (II).1
Ten years on, I came searching for
war
signs of the past
expecting remnants — magazine debris,
unexploded shells,
shrapnels
that
mark bomb wounds.
I came looking for
ghosts
—
people past, skeletons charred,
abandoned
brick-wood-cement
that
once housed them.
I could only find whispers —
whispers
among the clamour
of a small town outpost
in
full throttle —
everyday chores
sketching
outward signs
of
normalcy and life.
In that bustle
I
spot war-lines of a decade ago —
though the storylines
are
kept buried, wrapped
in old newsprint.
There is order amid uneasiness —
the
muezzin’s cry,
the monk’s chant —
baritones
merging
in their separateness.
At the bus station
black
coughs of exhaust
smoke-screen everything.
The
roads meet
and after the crossroad ritual
diverge,
skating along the undotted lines
of
control.
A porous garland
with
cracked beads
adorns Tiger Hill.
Beyond
the mountains
are
dark memories,
and beyond them
no
one knows,
and
beyond them
no one wants to know.
Even the flight of birds
that
wing over their crests
don’t know which feathers to down.
Chameleon-like
they fly, tracing perfect
parabolas.
I look up
and calculate
their exact arc
and find instead, a
flawed theorem.
* * *
GRAMMAR
she has no
english;
her lips round
/ in a moan ....
calligraphy of veins ....
— merlinda
bobis, ‘First Night’
My syntax, tightly-wrought —
I struggle to let go,
to let go of its formality,
of my wishbone
desiring juice — its deep marrow,
muscle, and skin.
The sentence finally pronounced —
I am greedy for long drawn-
out vowels, for consonants that
desire lust, tissue, grey-cells.
I am hungry for love,
for pleasure, for flight,
for a story essaying endlessly — words.
A comma decides to pr[e]oposition
a full-stop ... ellipses pause, to reflect —
a phrase decides not to reveal
her thoughts after all — ellipses and
semi-colons are strange bed-fellows.
Calligraphy of veins and words
require ink, the ink of breath,
of blood —
corpuscles speeding
faster than the loop of serifs ...
the unresolved story of our lives
in a fast train without
terminals.
I long only for italicised ellipses ...
my english is the other, the other
is really english —
she has no english;
her lips round / in a moan —
oval, rich, nuanced, grammar-
drenched, etched letters of glass.
* * *
AORTA ART
for Arjun Kalyanpur
Onion-pink aorta transforms
crimson-red — tertiary twigs
split, as installation art revolves
on its axis. They pose
as radiant organic sculptures,
made even more stunning
by teleradiology’s intense probe.
Five-beat rate scans —
magical images of living organs
captured remotely
from rural health clinics faraway
from city’s glass-and-steel labs.
Coral-shaped aortas rotate 360°
in perfect Brownian motion
on vertical hi-res lcd screens
—
scanned images of the diseased.
They are beautiful however —
illness radiating inner beauty —
hidden architecture, looped,
dancing in secret helixes.
Teleradiology Centre, Bangalore
* * *
GOA HAIKU
for Janet Pierce
shadow
glittering sea-skin
at mid-day, shadow-dance on
flint-speckled sand dunes
fisherwomen
the oily plaits of
bronze-toned fisherwomen, curl —
mimicking herring
breakfast
diced fresh fruits tumble —
honey-topped with coconut,
muesli and curd
cocktail
margarita glass
rimmed with salt — stings and blanches —
heat of ocean sun
seaside
beach umbrellas, flags,
towels, table-cloths flutter
with wind’s roving tide
shacks
shacks stacked side-by-side
heavy with dub-bass trance mix
compete for custom
sun bathing
topless bodies burn —
white to flaky ugly brown —
sun scorching secrets
sun burn
skin smarts, sweats — acrid
air crackles the deep heat of
the slow salving salt
studio
studio’s chill cool
air melts blues — deep blue belies
the red heat outside
energy
deceptive slow pace
subtly streams into my blood
—
sparking life from death
* * *
SAFE
for Chandrahas Choudhury
In Room 4, the safe
embedded in the wall
has not been opened
in a 150 years.
It has seen history,
life changing, aging —
but no one knows
what lies within.
The keyhole looks worn —
paint-stripped,
pock-marked,
knife-gouged,
dented scars
of attempted break-ins
worn openly
without care.
But what is inside? —
the first owner’s ashes,
her will, wealth, gold; old
currencies, lover’s relics?
Perhaps, it is best
kept as a mystery
in a world where
there is so little of it.
A spider runs across
the safe
weaving silver strands —
nature strings
her own signs
of preservation,
of protection — a web
masking talisman.
Flies buzz around
marking out
their territory
in an annoying tenor.
Wall’s peeling lime
flake off, whitewash —
failing to conceal time —
lose their glue.
A train of ants
enroute elsewhere
get distracted
at the keyhole’s gape.
Some tunnel in, but
even after days on end —
I do not see
them
emerge out again.
Gratitude Heritage House,
Pondicherry
* * *
RAGHU RAI PHOTOGRAPH
On a river-bank, abandoned clay-idols
of goddesses wait for their last rites.
An old widow clad in a white cotton sari
looks on, awaiting a similar fate.
A cow, half-hidden behind a gigantic tree,
her bovine-head resembling a decapitated
hunting trophy,
nailed to the trunk.
Everything is calm — the river rippleless —
a boat plies on, lazily. An emaciated
boatman rests on his long bamboo-oar,
waiting for the meagre wealth clay
deities
provide once they dissolve — an ungodly
immersion in the polluted river. Death, life,
ceremony, sacrifice, serenity, ferocity —
frozen meditatively still, find umbrage
under the scant-leafed large old tree.
Kolkata, misted on the horizon
across the river’s far edge, looms sprawling —
entirely unaware of a captured drama
waiting to unfold at the city’s periphery.
*
* *
[the above poem have been
reprinted with the permission of the author, Sudeep Sen, from his new book, Fractals: New & Selected Poems |
Translations: 1980-2015 (London Magazine Editions, U.K.)]
Sudeep Sen’s prize-winning books include Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (HarperCollins), Rain, Aria (A. K. Ramanujan Translation Award), The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry (editor), Fractals: New & Selected Poems | Translations 1980-2015 (London Magazine Editions) and EroText (Vintage: Penguin Random House). Blue Nude: New Poems & Ekphrasis (Jorge Zalamea International Poetry Prize) is forthcoming. Sen’s works have been translated into over 25 languages. His words have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Newsweek, Guardian, Observer, Independent, Telegraph, Financial Times, Herald, Poetry Review, Literary Review, Harvard Review, Hindu, Hindustan Times, Times of India, Indian Express, Outlook, India Today, and broadcast on bbc, pbs, cnn ibn, ndtv, air & Doordarshan. Sen’s newer work appears in New Writing 15 (Granta), Language for a New Century (Norton), Leela: An Erotic Play of Verse and Art (Collins), Indian Love Poems (Knopf/Random House/Everyman), Out of Bounds (Bloodaxe), and Initiate: Oxford New Writing (Blackwell). He is the editorial director of AARK ARTS and the editor of Atlas. Sen is the first Asian honoured to speak and read at the Nobel Laureate Week. The Government of India awarded him the senior fellowship for “outstanding persons in the field of culture/literature.”
