Stammer
Stammer is no handicap.
It is a mode of speech.
Stammer is the silence that falls
between the word and its meaning,
just as lameness is the
silence that falls between
the word and the deed.
Did stammer precede language
or succeed it?
Is it only a dialect or
a language itself?
These questions make
the linguists stammer.
Each time we stammer,
we offer a sacrifice
to the God of meanings.
When a whole people stammer,
stammer becomes their mother-tongue,
just as it is with us now.
God too must have stammered
when He created man.
That is why all the words of man
carry different meanings.
That is why everything he says,
from his prayers to his commands
stammers
like poetry.
(2002)
Gandhi and Poetry
One day a lean poem
reached Gandhi’s ashram
to have a glimpse of the man.
Gandhi, spinning away
his thread towards Ram,
took no notice of the poem
waiting at his door
ashamed as he was no 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 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 his hamlet.
Yet I know no work, I only sing.
First I sang in the courts,
then I was plump and handsome;
but now I am on the streets,
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 speech of peasants.’
The poem turned into a grain
and lay waiting in the fields
for the tiller to come
and upturn the virgin soil
moist with the new rain.
(1993)
The Mad
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 another reality. Their love
is moonlight. It overflows
on full moon day.
Looking up they see
gods we have never heard of. They
shake their wings when
we fancy they
shrug their shoulders. They hold
that even flies have souls,
that the green god of grasshoppers
leaps up on thin legs.
At times they see trees bleed, hear
lions roaring in 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.
When 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 walk, they walk on, restless,
for their earth is boiling still.
The mad are not
mad like us.
(1996)
Poetry Will Come Back
We need rice, salt,
chili, firewood;
we can do without poetry.
Yet poetry will come back
like rice,
the seed of the earth,
boiled and cleaned of husk and bran,
overflowing every measure,
every granary and godown;
like salt,
the memory of the sea,
watering our mouths,
burning us with pain
to heal our wounds,
to nourish our roots;
like chili,
the lust of the clay,
turning hot our lips, tongues,
breasts, waists, veins and nerves;
like the firewood,
the bones of the forest,
their marrow melting sizzling
burning slow with tiny flames,
chanting, in a single breath,
rice salt chili firewood poetry.
(1997)
Sharing the Rooster
Carry away my rooster, share it among yourselves,
But give back to me that knife-sharp beak.
Carry away my rooster, share it among yourselves,
But give back to me that cockscomb of copper,
Those eyes red and black like kunni seeds…
Carry away my rooster, share it among yourselves,
But give back to me those golden legs,
Those toes like sesame flowers,
Those bright sugar-cane nails…
Carry away my rooster, share it among yourselves,
But give back to me that trunk like a little drum,
That throat that sounds like a conch,
That liver that blows like a pipe,
Those guts that shape a lyre…
Carry away my rooster, share it among yourselves,
But give back to me those wings like banana leaves,
Those feathers like coconut blooms,
That tail like tender pineapple shoots,
That mating that scatters sparks,
That cock-fight with its virgin valour…
Carry away my rooster, share it among yourselves,
O, yes, you can have the rooster’s horns,
You can have his teeth,
Have too the rooster’s egg
The rooster’s breasts as well…
Carry away my rooster, share it among yourselves,
But give back to me, give back to me, just my rooster, just.
(1972)
