In a Time of Burning
Page 7
(MIDNIGHT MASS)
1
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MIDNIGHT MASS [2003]
(ïœOó¾Š Ì¬ê)
1
The friend who invited me
to attend midnight mass
for the first time
is no longer alive.
The sea swallowed him
when the navy shot him down
as he set off from Kurunagar.
Twelve years later, one morning
I stand on the same sea-shore,
his love and his songs
still echoing in the wind.
In front of me, a fence.
Nowadays there is no sea
that escapes the harsh eyes
of the border patrol.
Yet the voices of the people
struck down by the armed forces
drift in the salt wind,
gifted with immortality.
In despair
I cross the seven seas
and bury myself in a lonely room
where night comes with the day
in this city of unending winter
in infinite space.
2
The second time I went to midnight mass
the falling snow’s whiteness
had sheeted the streets.
In the city of Vienna
in the breath-catching beauty of the night
the cathedral square fills.
Although the ancient mass is said
in an ancient language, yet
the bells speak everywhere
with the same voice.
Mother says, if I touch you
the black will come off
on my fingers.
May I touch you and see?
In the blue eyes of the small boy
who asks so eagerly,
the light of darkness.
I am shocked for an instant,
then reach out my hands.
Rather than shrinking in shame,
she pulls at the boy with anger.
The words of Jesus
join with the boy’s voice
sobbing in disappointment:
Elohi, Elohi, lama sabachtani.
3
A third time I went to mass
when cold joined with snow,
the snow with the land,
and the trees, stripped of leaves,
lay languorously with the moon.
The great cathedral overflowed;
we went to a side-chapel
the fingers of our gloved hands entwined.
Through our fingertips
the language of our love speaks
of meeting and parting,
of fulfilment and endurance,
of fever and uncertainty.
The music, ecstatic,
always creates a space among the crowds
for those who enter within.
When midnight is past, we return
and dissolve in a single drop of wine.
ªê‹ñE
(CHEMMANI)
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CHEMMANI [2003]
(ªê‹ñE)
The wind returns to the street
teeming with life and death.
It hesitates a little
as it crosses the bridge.
This wind knows of the days
when the water beneath the bridge
glinted in the light
blue, green and red.
During a night of merciless rain
when sheets of water, ocean-like,
poured into the lake,
driven by terror, fleeing in panic,
a mother tripped, her baby
slipping, fell into the water.
The bed carrying an old man
became his bier.
In the driving wind, after the rain,
the entire street turned
into a cremation ground.
Even after everyone had crossed over,
the howling of dogs
filled these empty villages.
This bridge has weathered, gained strength
enduring the burden
of a hundred thousand tales.
Under the bridge
the skulls and bones of all those
buried beneath the mud and mire
take wing, fill the expanse
with lies.
Now it is evening,
the sun is liquid gold.
Although everything is shattered to bits,
a false illusion suggests
everything is the same.
One step of the goddess of peace
who comes to us in fetters
erases the landscape,
arouses instead the security guard
at the fence surrounding the sea,
a smile on his face.
Next to him, I see a demon face
willing to pour away the country’s wealth,
to sell the air and the water
and swallow up the land and its yield.
Faces sprout suddenly, on hoardings
as high as palmyra palms.
Chemmani, burial ground, is covered up
by advertisements for cell-phones.
This bridge, strengthened by its burden
of a hundred thousand tales
collapses
within a single tear.
ñ„꣜
(COUSIN)
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COUSIN [2004]
(ñ„꣜)
When my cousin speaks
of enduring six displacements
within the nine years,
the wrinkles gather and droop
along her face.
The single electric light above
merely deepens the darkness.
A sense of loss prevails
always,
like a lamp keeping vigil
at a dead man’s head.
Her words are not punctuated
by sobs; they are taut
with sorrow.
Stirred by old memories
of providing shelter, so often,
to those who escaped the patrolling guards
and travelled secretly, by night,
she glances towards the threshold
from time to time.
She leaves her back door open.
When her children, grown up now,
smile at her, in an instant
the legendary milk-ocean materialises.
Her house was on the road
which stretched all the way to the sea
from the front of the temple.
Not a sign of it now.
We went to take a look, in the morning,
accompanied by soldiers
into the high security zone.
Not even a single parrot left
nesting in the holes of palmyra palms
which still stand upright
although their crowns are shorn.
Upon ripped and fragmented land
men who hold no attachment to it
nor kinship,
squat, holding weapons.
We return through the ruins,
the south wind that sprang up yesterday
scattering the dust ahead of us,
the heat burning us up with fury.
Only headless shadows follow us.
My cousin’s sari-end, wet with tears
streaming from her eyes,
will dry soon enough.
We whose hearts were moved with love
not only for humankind
but also for plants and trees and houses
endure in our times
only the scourge
of man’s arrogance.
ÝŸøƒè¬óJ™
(ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVER)