Poetry: Bashabi Fraser, CBE

Bashabi Fraser

A Sharp Equation

With spring came a fresh impetus

Implemented by the melting snow

Somewhere in the crystal north -

It urged the burn to flow

Swiftly and push back the sludge

Of duckweed to the loch’s 

Limits, creating the free territory

For the hatch of cygnets to swim amok,

Watched by the bright cautious eyes

Of graceful parent sentinels

Ready to flare up if a playful dog

Or a curious camera came dangerously close.

The five brown youngsters have billowed

To ripeness till it is time to be shoved out

To make room for their next set of siblings

To emerge and know the same currents

Of cautious care of 2 + 5 that has to be

Maintained in loch and burn with no room

For claims or rivalries from an older brood.

***

A lonely Race

A river’s journey is long and lonely 

Like the veteran long distance runner

A challenge from start to finish

An adventure at every ripple of my flow

I have no consort or companion

No mother’s arms, no sibling’s rivalry -

I am a witness through time

I revel in reminiscence and reflection

I mirror heaven’s fury and kindness

I salute panoramic vistas

I lash past every urban sprawl

And lap around humble villages.

I am a solitary meanderer

Journeying to my finishing line

Which does not make me a champion

But swallows my singular identity

In a churning burial ground of eternal oblivion. 

Edinburgh 4/5 Sept. 2016

***

2020

The life that we knew

Of crowds of all hues

Waiting in queues

For known destinations

In quotidian missions

With hopes and visions -

Have all disappeared.

That life of coffee and cake

Of picnics by lakes

Of grand social bakes

That lunch with a friend

That parcel to send

That play at the end

Of the day – have been snatched away.

And on each lonely day

With hope held at bay

And a fear here to stay

We hear the wave crashing

Like a breaker smashing

From distant shores

Against our clamped doors.

***

Triveni and Mamilla

This is the Triveni , the confluence where three

rivers of culture converge, the Mohona  of merging

histories. Here the fez and kippah brave the noonday

sun where the crown of thorns has withered to allow

olive and lemon trees to nurture and sustain the city’s

diversity, watered by the clouds rising from the mountain

stream of Nahal Katlav and the neighbouring Jordan. 

This is where the Prophets of the confluence found the shade

of leafy comfort and the droplets of quenching coolness.

Here the Sahabah  found rest, contemplating on the 

hills beyond, and thousands found solace at their side

when their tired bones returned to the dust from which

life once sprang. So let them lie and let us light a candle of 

hope to those who sleep and for those who pass as they

know that this is the democratic corner where pundit,

pauper and priest rest from Byzantine’s splendid days, 

through time, pleading to us to desist from ruffling 

the dust that holds many layered secrets of possible harmony.

***

1. Triveni is another name for the confluence where three rivers meet at Allahabad in India.

2. Mohona is a confluence.

3. Disciples of  the Prophet Mohammed.

***

Bashabi Fraser is Professor Emerita, and a former Professor of English and Creative Writing. She is the co-founder and Director of the Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies and Chief Editor of the academic and creative e-journal, Gitanjali and Beyond. Bashabi is also a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Dundee and an Honorary Fellow at the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Edinburgh. She is the author of From the Ganga to the Tay, an epic poem.

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Setu, December 2022