I should have killed the serpents
that roiled in the river. One escaped,
coiled under the warm stove,
its scales brittle and ready to crackle
into a spiral of fire like Vishnu’s disc.
The house is now drowned. Kitchen fire
doused in rain, hissed like the serpent
I failed to slay, watched it slither
into my dream – poison coloured my nails,
made bones frail till I broke like a twig.
The river washed me away as I divined
the sky, reading as I would my palm where
serpentine lines grooved by storm
mirrored the currents that looped
around, sucking me into dark reeds.
Another poem prompted by the recent flooding in Chennai. See “Flood.”
The water mark below my lips at the place
cleft disappears like a rumour.
I watched the water level rise above my heart
where a spring lies buried.
Then to my neck as the serpent stirred, scales
beehive of deep and long sighs.
I smelled earth, roots of the neem tree in clumps
of clay that snagged my voice.
Like a beaker the vocal chord filled, brimmed over
when a turtle choked the larynx.
As the noise subsided I heard the announcement
from the sky. The wind fell.
In the darkness among abandoned homes plumeria
rendered odourless.
Pale with terror pigeons under windowsills breathed
lung full with bones of the drowned.
In response to “Flooded” by Jean Morris. Chennai experienced unprecedented rain and flooding in December 2015, claiming many lives and rendering people homeless. The apartment block where I live was flooded. I had to move out and stay away from home for 17 days. I wrote poems during this period to cope with the suffering I saw around, to grapple with the distress of displacement, of being homeless.
Visitation, the long poem that begins Jacques Brault’s first collection, Mémoire (short extract with translation in this earlier post), is a complex evocation of cultural oppression and the poet’s sense of exile from self. It’s full of words and images that cannot but also evoke today’s physical exiles, the millions of refugees, and these suggested a much simpler and shorter erasure poem. French, with its changing word-endings, gives less scope for erasure than English, but the process was still an interesting way of engaging with language and emotions.
Remember
Remember your nakedness, their exile
the man struggling to live
I find myself again at the appointed place
and thirsty for these words
I left my country with little pride
Exile is hard, my fear follows me
Silence is no longer possible – listen
some evening to what I shall say
Come closer and touch my voiceless misery
my faceless body, my silent hope
Poetry has no importance, but it speaks
Sweet violence rises up
My despair arrives with broken neck
no name, no past and harbouring no hatred
Some grey morning a comrade I cannot name
and a beloved country tremble
I shall live weighed down and bent over
my words still resounding from land to land
A shadow will trace the outline
of your pale face when I find it again.
(words and phrases culled from Jacques Brault’s nearly 900-word-long poem, Visitation)
Souvenez-vous / de / votre nudité / de leur exil / de celui qui a mal de vivre /
Je me retrouve / au / rendez-vous / J’ai soif / de / ces paroles /
J’ai quitté / le pays / peu fier / L’exil est dur / ma peur / me suit /
Je ne sais plus / me taire / Ecoute / ce que / je / dirai / un soir /
Approche et / touche / ma misère / sans voix / mon corps / sans visage / ma silencieuse espérance /
La poésie / est / sans importance / mais elle / parle / La violence / douce / se relève /
Ma détresse / arrive / le cou brisé / sans nom / sans passé / et sans haine /
Un matin gris / une /compagne / innommable / et / un pays aimé tremblent /
Je vivrai / lourd et penché / Mes mots / vibrent encore / entre terre et terre /
Une ombre / tracera / ta figure blanche / retrouvée.
It was raining in London – serious rain with fast-flowing gutters and burst water mains – and I’d stopped serially internet-dating “Other-American” poets in order to hang out for a while with Jacques Brault. Both of these are from his first collection, Mémoire (1965).
Nameless
Here on the streets the water wails its old lament
Seagulls crash-land
I do not know your name know nothing any more
All these human shapes barely floating now in the gutters
Fingernails marred by eyelids
Smiles in the hollow of a groin
Jumbled faces in old windows
So many dead unadorned unlabelled
Melting in the sweet water
April casts its light and shadow on their graves
Water mingles our little hopes
Mutely agile not a bubble or an eddy
A volley of laughter rains down on the streets
Oh watery folly
The water’s soft lament against the tide of time
This murmuring of pale lips this wrinkling of old skin
All those who leave here are undone
And you scattered to the four winds
You whom I seek among these long tresses swept towards the sewers
But water runs its own business in its own way
A fine embroiderer of death’s complex designs
Water sews and re-sews a lovely length of fabric
As it flows
Anonyme
L’eau dans la rue se plaint d’une vieille plainte Où se cassent des mouettes d’eau
Je ne sais ton nom je ne sais plus Tant de formes humaines à peine coulent encore dans les caniveaux Doigts à l’ongle embué de paupières Sourires au creux de l’aine Visages disjoints de vieilles fenêtres
Tant de morts sans collier ni bannière Fondent en la douceur de l’eau Avril sur les tombes met une ombre de lumière
L’eau raccorde les petits espoirs Agile et muette et sans bulles ni remous Une volée de rires qui s’abattent dans la rue O folie de l’eau
La plainte de l’eau tout bas à contre-courant de l’heure C’est un murmure de lèvres blanches un froissis de vieilles peaux Tous ceux-là que s’en vont se défont
Et toi éparse çà et là Toi que je cherche parmi les cheveux qui s’allongent vers l’égout
Mais l’eau mène bien son ouvroir et sa façon Brodeuse fine des morts aux dessins compliqués L’eau coud et recoud fait une belle étoffe longue Et coule
Like All Those Others
You are the one invented by my gaze
like the shape of an ink blot on paper
and I am unafraid to speak my love
for you the way you are just as I fashion you
as my hands find themselves again upon your body
and the greedy expectancy of every day
the annunciation of a world scarcely beginning
the gestures of morning on a street corner
that snatch at a vagabond’s one instant of light
and this folly of feeling like your newest unborn child
I love you like all those others yesterday tomorrow
still learning this old refrain learning it always
I love you in the future wind in the rubble of fear
love you in the little life of hair curlers
love you in these paltry ecstasies these meagre glories
love you alone and abandoned by myself
Comme tant d’autres
Ton être que j’invente du regard
comme une tache d’encre sur le papier
je n’ai pas peur de nommer mon amour
tu es comme je t’aime telle que je te fais
avec mes mains retrouvées sur ton corps
et l’espérance goulue de chaque jour
l’annonciation d’un monde qui commence à peine
le geste du matin au coin de la rue
qui reprend à la rôdeuse un instant de lumière
et cette folie d’être en toi un nouvel enfant à naître
je t’aime comme tant d’autres hier demain
cette vieille rengaine je l’apprends encore je l’apprends toujours
je t’aime dans le vent du futur dans la pierraille de la peur
je t’aime dans la petite existence en bigoudis
je t’aime dans les pauvres extases dans les chiches gloires
je t’aime seul et déserté de moi-même
They did well for themselves the Victorians
No better monument to their efficiency and progress
than these enduring streets of red-brick and yellow-brick houses
We find them surprisingly comforting and congenial
Hard work hard money they speak of and we admire that
but find ourselves worthy of more and better
We are scaling up!
Our new homes behind these old walls
will have bigger rooms especially bigger kitchens
lined with appliances the Victorians never imagined
We must have as many bathrooms as bedrooms
We keep ourselves cleaner than they did
Our windows will be triple-glazed and won’t open
We don’t care about the world outside because
it’s not our private property!
We don’t care about fresh air because our air will be conditioned
and as for daylight – the lovely leaf-dappled light
of a hundred and fifty suburban springs and summers and autumns –
we shan’t care about that either when our eyes are fixed
on our high-definition immersive TV and computer screens
We care for nothing and no one for we have the best of both worlds: Upscale apartments within a Victorian façade!
Malama Gulley, ta koya ne
before a window in a small
room with her own two sons.
Da ina tunanin wannan lokaci,
memories fade and blur, amma
wannan I remember: Malama
ta koya mani the possibility
da zan iya yi rubutu da karatu
kuma, even when kafofi na suna
compressed by takalma. She was,
dai dai, preparing me to go
to board at school in Jos,
where expectation of malami
would be for me to present
myself daily like some fine
horse prepared for durbar
to amsa the emir when yana
kiran sa, adorned in all
manner of contraptions
with takalma upon my feet.
Malama, how do I admit, after
all the lessons you gave me,
that this girl who you taught
school-behavior, how to raise
hannun dama high to question,
how to zauna, zama at my desk
until given leave to go for
recess, break—and that
having rushed outside to play,
how I would also be expected
by the malami to dawo and take
up my place again with willing
interest? Malama, how do I
confess that the one moment
of the next year, hudu, year
for which you so well prepared
me, the moment that remains
most haske in my memory was
in art class, the discovery
of a large biro with felt tip,
a marker that (if not truly
permanent) would at least dade
several weeks upon a young
girl’s skin. I hid it like
some sin behind my back, asked
permission to relieve myself,
snuck it out to the girls’
toilet. There, I removed my
takalma (at that time, sandals
only) with thin straps, baki,
hooked between the toes like
flip-flops, and a thin sole.
Akan kafofi na, I then drew
in those cords of bondage,
filled the paler skin not
quite as browned on the top
of each foot. Kuma na duba
the underside of each with
care, found eight barefoot
years had left them not so
different from the still-new
tan bottoms of my sandals.
Yauwa. I put the shoes back
on my feet, returned to class,
returned the borrowed ink.
Until then, I had not (in my
own assessment) sinned, only
made a loan of an implement,
promptly returned it, and had
also made an exploration, an
experiment, a drawing. Amma,
amma, sannu da rana, I strayed
from the straight path, wrapped
each of my takalmi into an
extra dankwali and hid them
both beneath my bed, gathered
my litafi, set out with intention
to deceive. And for almost two
weeks, my kafofi were free, had
escaped for an extended recess,
stayed on break. When I was
caught — of course, because
the marks began to fade—I
was caned (but briefly) by the
Malam teaching Maths, who
struggled, when he caught me,
not to laugh, who could not
keep himself from showing
juyayi to one small girl
from the jeji who preferred
to wear her own familiar feet.
His gnarled hand gently lifts each egg,
holds it a fixed distance from the candle
which turns each one into a glowing orb
of marble, veined with possibility. Light
also reveals a fault-line of weakness, an
unevenness in the layers of spun calcium,
a place between the ochre freckles prone
to fail, likely to crack during the coming
days of incubation. An early break would
mean the end for some half-formed thing
as yet unable to survive without its oval
exoskeleton. What is there to lose in the face
of a disaster so foretold? The old man with
the candle grants permission to his grandson
for an experiment, indulges the young one’s
request, then watches from a distance as
the boy selects a roll of hope from the First
Aid case, gently wraps and smooths the tape
across the weak place in the shell, shapes
a non-invasive suture. Long after the child
goes to bed, the grandfather stays awake.
Eventually, he rises, walks softly to the door,
pauses to contemplate the bandaged orb
nestled in the incubator’s corner, then slips
outside to breathe in the good night, to hold
that breath and listen for the familiar eerie
trill of the Eastern screech owl. For the first
time in near forever, he finds himself in prayer.
This entry is part 5 of 5 in the series Art and about
Dulwich Picture Gallery
1.
This beauty’s not for everyone
blind windows like a prison
said a friend indifferent
to Soane’s genius
but I exult in it.
The honey-coloured bricks
and the harmonious outline
are earth and air.
It’s here that I come
to be grounded in a space
where sorrow and regret
can be felt but can’t annihilate
where hope can briefly soar.
2.
The sheer heft lovely lines
unchanging serenity
are what I love
so the old photo was a shock.
Many bombs fell on south-east London
You can see the places still
where a modern house interrupts
a Victorian terrace.
Around Dulwich small plaques
give the date the names
and ages of the dead
and in July 44 the gallery took a hit
that reduced its heart to rubble.
In this picture no sweet geometry
The honey drips
a waterfall of chaos
a radical artwork depicting
the horror of war.
Today’s fine structure
bears few traces
but once seen never forgotten
The rebuilt harmonies become a hymn
to resilience and repair.
3.
On the corner by the pub car-park is a new mural
after van Dyck’s Venetia Lady Digby on her Deathbed.
Let me count the ways this work based on a portrait
of a dead woman fills me with paradoxical happiness.
Huge and bright and apart from the rose mostly blue,
it’s by the German artist MadC – C is for Claudia,
a woman of bold vision and talent and about the age
Venetia Digby was when she died in her sleep in 1633.
The painting was the muralist’s choice: a clever project,
these “old master murals” by street artists talking back
to their chosen works in the gallery have flashed up
on blank walls and gable ends all over Dulwich, but
none has taken my breath, none makes me stop and
smile and ponder each time I see it the way this does –
a mistressful meeting of past and present, private and
public art, death and unrestrained but not unthinking life.
