Of Children

I was alone at my place, when there was a knock at the door. Immediately it dawned on me that suddenly I had this encumbering and needless responsibility of entertaining this unknown person lurking behind the door as there was no one in the house. ‘Come in’, I said, although I didn’t mean it and there she stood - my cousin sister, peering in through the half open door. I faked a smile and forced a cheerful ‘hello’ which upset my vocal cord. I cleared my throat. She reciprocated in a similar manner largely ignorant of my discomfort and distress. And then there was the silence – that awkwardness which starves for immediate remedy. Being the elder person in the arena, I managed some questions in order to end my discomfiture. I was least interested in the answers. Yet, with the aid of some superhuman abilities, I deciphered that she was in the fourth standard. I asked the young girl to sit down and asked her if she’d like to eat or drink something. In other words I became hospitable, hankering onto every demand she would make in order to save myself from the awkwardness looming in the room! 

Now, the thing is, I don’t like kids. I know, this is an impatient conclusion and a gross over generalisation and it reveals more about me than about them, but, I can’t help it. It’s not that I hate them – no, that would be saying too much, unnecessarily. I guess they are fine in the parks, playing ball or with their dolls, with their whole scaled down He-Man family or whatever it is that they play with these days. They are bearable when they are under strict adult supervision and then sometimes, during these exceptional occasions they might seem adorable, cherubic even, that is, from a safe distance of about a hundred metres. However, if you ask me, I am fine without them.

The Invasion

When you brought the outsider 
To the quiet of this hill, 
His loud mannerisms 
And his erudite conversations 
Drowned the nightingale song 
And the sky was suffused with the flutter of wings 
In diaspora. 

With heavy steps 
He walks now 
Ascending 
The summit of our secret 
Where a flower grows - 
A wildflower 
Among the wilderness, 
A dull flower 
Wet with dew, 
A pallid white spot 
Among the green, 
A nameless flower 
Ashamed now 
Of being there - 
A native embarrassment 
Under a foreign gaze, 
It quietly broods. 
It is to be uprooted now 
Or will it be trampled upon? 

And as the sun settles 
In the heart of the sky, 
The monkey 
Swings from branch 
To branch 
Escaping the poacher's gun. 
A shot, 
Lightning, 
An unheard thunder 
In this quietness. 
And this fear is unknown 
And this fear is deep 
And settles 
Under the stones 
Of running streams. 
The ape, 
Misses a branch now, 
Comes crashing down. 
Crimson blossoms 
Are gently shed. 

The sky, 
Now drenched in blood, 
Is a memory 
Of what has been 
As a crow laments, 
Somewhere, 
At regular intervals, 
Lost in thought. 
A bee still lingers 
In the scent of a flower, 
Humming a tune 
In drunkenness 
Oblivious that night is near. 
And the flower 
Folds its petals close 
In an embrace 
As a cold breeze gently 
Ruffles its bare limbs. 

Night has seeped in 
Slowly, secretly, 
In the throat of a frog now, 
Now in the murmur of streams. 

And as I sojourn here 
In this last tranquility, 
Floating with fireflies, 
Now bright, now dim, 
Now dimmer, 
I see the blinding approach 
Of a torchlight. 
___

Allusion

I write love poems

because I’m selfish.

I give you flesh

in broken words and phrases

so in the white spaces

I might possess you.

I capture you between words

and sentences laying you down

in lines.

I place a comma

so you might breathe

and come to life

for me.

I place a full-stop

now here, now there,

almost carelessly,

so you might cease

and listen

to me.

I give you thoughts

in words and words from thoughts

so you might agree.

I give you a face

in a verse.

I make you smile

or perhaps flood you

in a trail of letters

swimming down your cheek

to believe

they are yours to give.

(But if I dare be honest,

they are only mine.)

Two symmetrical phrases

slide down to become hands

as I caress them

under the sharpness of my pen;

they come alive

in slow dancing movements

to form an embrace

in a complete sentence.

I wish to give you wings...

But then I’d better not.

I write love poems

because I’m selfish.

so that I might possess you

and grant you the gift of eternity.

But within the folds

of my pages

you will be lost one day,

to be smudged

burnt and buried.

You too!

You intangible one.

Yet I have sat down to conjure

lifeless words,

sentences, verses, scattering

commas and full-stops

across barren sheets

to resurrect you;

so that I can play God

and grant you justice

for your indifference

and hate.

I write love poems

so that you might love

me.

The Piano

Starring: Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill, Anna Paquin
Director: Jane Campion
A mute woman, Ada (Holly Hunter) and her spirited daughter, natives of Scotland, find themselves on the shores of 19th Century New Zealand. They wait for Stewart, a colonist and Ada’s husband by arrangement. Among her belongings the piano, Ada’s prized possession and her voice, stands menacingly in front of the sea. Stewart, against her wishes, orders for the encumbering piano to be left behind on the shores as they enter the wilderness.

The natives of the region, the Maori, represent values which strongly oppose the husband’s Victorian sensibilities, especially in matters of sexuality and marriage. Ada and her daughter are suddenly caught between these two world as they seek a place of their own. The piano, which becomes the cause of the estrangement between Stewart and Ada, arouses violent passions within Baines, a rugged, earthy illiterate who has adopted the Maorian ways. He helps Ada retrieve her piano and in exchange takes lessons from her, which become a series of threatening sexual encounters. The strong-willed Baines, overcome with passion, turns gentle and passionate as his love for Ada deepens. The film is an exploration of human character, eroticism and sexuality finding release behind locked doors. It thematically observes the tug-o-war between the individual and an oppressive society, between passion and reason.

The cinematography is brilliant: The blue-grey tones prevalent in most of the scenes provide a depressing, haunting quality contrasted by the use of rich, warm colours during the love scenes. The symbolism in the film is significant: The piano itself is a metaphor – It is Ada’s voice but it also represents a destructive passion that consumes her. The sea with its waves symbolise the turbulent forces of life itself. The sea that brings Ada to the shores of New Zealand ends up engulfing her piano. The music is minimalistic, sensual and a tangible presence in the film, composed by Michael Nyman. Hunter, an able pianist, plays her own pieces.

The Piano is a stimulating experience and a must-watch for those who seek more in cinema

Ode to Clothes

by Pablo Neruda

Every morning you wait,
clothes, over a chair,
to fill yourself with
my vanity, my love,
my hope, my body.
Barely
risen from sleep,
I relinquish the water,
enter your sleeves,
my legs look for
the hollows of your legs,
and so embraced
by your indefatigable faithfulness
I rise, to tread the grass,
enter poetry,
consider through the windows,
the things,
the men, the women,
the deeds and the fights
go on forming me,
go on making me face things
working my hands,
opening my eyes,
using my mouth,
and so,
clothes,
I too go forming you,
extending your elbows,
snapping your threads,
and so your life expands
in the image of my life.
In the wind
you billow and snap
as if you were my soul,
at bad times
you cling
to my bones,
vacant, for the night,
darkness, sleep
populate with their phantoms
your wings and mine.
I wonder
if one day
a bullet
from the enemy
will leave you stained with my blood
and then
you will die with me
or one day
not quite
so dramatic
but simple,
you will fall ill,
clothes,
with me,
grow old
with me, with my body
and joined
we will enter
the earth.
Because of this
each day
I greet you
with reverence and then
you embrace me and I forget you,
because we are one
and we will go on
facing the wind, in the night,
the streets or the fight,
a single body,
one day, one day, some day, still.

Departure

One never truly knows until the very end, that things end. We are so hopelessly bereft of wisdom. We go around and around, turning and turning, spiraling out of control, looking this way and that, never at the face of our existence, defying all that life is to create our own personal experiences for our little tremulous lives. And thus we never know. We never know what it is that we truly do. We can never know. But then as the susurrus of pages turning and turning slowly dies to reveal a dreaded quiet, as the hard liquid ink becomes lighter and lighter, as we draw ourselves closer to exhaustion, we see that things are quite different and that we have been grievously wrong about everything we have known. Who can truly believe, with all earnestness, in the moment of a song, the next hours will be spent in silence?

A friend, lover, companion went away this night. And I sit here, now trying to fill the vacuum that he has left behind. I am suddenly given the responsibility to inhabit this room alone. Suddenly, it is quiet, empty, different. The previous hours in his mirthful company have withered to become memory. And while this memory lingers, it invokes his absence. During the long drive to the airport, I thought I was going somewhere else, somewhere to be together but never to part. The vast city with its unblinking lights felt safe and at a distance. It was even beautiful. But then as we neared the massive structure of the airport, things began to crumble and evade me. I’ve never truly been happy at airports and railway stations. Some woman bundled up in a corner, or a child sitting on one of those red plastic seats is always sad. Furthermore, in that hurry and running around one never realizes how truly sad one is. It is only after that departure, after that one moment when the clasp loosens, when a beloved is swallowed by a wave of strangers the realization occurs. Something is over. Irrevocably changed.

The long drive back is arduous when one is alone; the city at night is a sad thing, especially when the residual warmth of a dear companion has settled in the folds of your shirt; when your hands still bear a faint remembrance of his scent. And this is no compensation for your loss but a cruel reminder of that very loss. It is not memory. It is absence.

We embraced tightly to make up for all the embraces that will not be. We looked into each other’s eyes, briefly, mumbled incoherent words; mumbled a little more. But a hard bulging noise had deafened our ears. I got into the cab and looked straight ahead, firmly, as if I was the one going somewhere. He did the same and walked on, pushing his cart carrying his luggage, and was soon swallowed by a wave of strangers. But he was definitely going somewhere. He was going away.

Descent

As I close the door behind me, and lock it, the world outside is a lost thing, a vaporous memory dissolving, drifting into blue depths, eroding as the wind grows stronger. I hear it moaning but faintly from within this tranquility.

As I walk further into the depths of this quiet, I forget what it was like there, as if I am forgetting a dream as the day proceeds. The air is still, here in the depths of this underworld. The sound of my feet on the amorphous sand disturbs the fragile order of this secret. I leave marks behind me as I walk on, vestiges of a world that must never find a way here. The sand gently evens itself, removing the memory of my path. Nothing is to be remembered here. The curse of time has not befallen this underworld. There is no past here, no future. It is immortal.

Its walls slowly enfold me; the quietness enmeshes me and soon I will be a part of this place. Soon I will become this place.There is a faint smell of things still, of something lingering, of flesh and of blood, like the remains of a lover within the folds of a quilt at dawn – the smell of loss. But it is only me who has carried this smell from above; it is not of this place. The smell pollutes the sanctity of this region’s nothingness. To bring anything here from the outside world is a sin.

The ancients seem to have settled here, sediments of a turbulent history, now a part of the region’s crust; the ghosts have been resurrected but their memories forgotten – they are alive here, present. The wraiths float in serpentine trails, hidden behind gray pillars now, now suddenly a glimmer in the translucent light, whispering in echoes. They rise and fall and disappear.

Here, where the purple flowers grow upside down, where the rocks are wet and green with water; where the lake is still, undisturbed even by those who live in its depths, what does the world outside matter? Let it be destroyed, let it end. I care not. I have long inhabited a dream. Now I am free.