What If

As if an earthquake

Always happens elsewhere;

As if the pond here

Will forever be still

And as if

the lotuses with

their mouths open

will forever

gape at the skies.

What if I wake up

To see the skies fall

What if I go back

To my mother-Africa

Not your grandmother

What if the Continent of Darkness

Spreads between us

TRIAL BY LIFE

Twenty years ago

In the operation theatre

Of the hospital

Anesthesia awakened me

To you;

All at once, you emerged

From the pits of my being;

Like lightening rose

The voice of God

Blinding the face of darkness;

Green masks and cat eyes

Flashing their dangerous competence

Ready to terminate life

At its root.

I ran for your life

Salvaged you from

The murderous tools

Of the doctor, that pursued me

And entered my dreams forever

I built a cocoon around you

Protecting you from evil spirits;

From the foetal state

To your adult being

Rearing you with

The pain of repentance;

The devil and God have

Battled in me

We both burn

In the passion of your revenge

And remain suspended

Between life and death

As if on the operation table

Both of us

The centre of the universe

With green masks and cat eyes

All around us.

ARRIVAL

JAVA HOUSE, IOWA CITY

Café au lait

Unleashed from the contours

of a smile

I felt the American Indian

feel me

with his brown native eyes,

reaching out from just above

the edges of the table pushed against the farthest wall,

on which hung his portrait

with his arms as if

resting on the table

In Java House

amidst the buzz of

alien coffee percolators

and strange twangy English,

he and I waited for the first move

he with his crown of feathers

I with the perfect round

teeka on my forehead,

both Indians in exile

one on his own land

the other for whom

the rising of the sun

was at once its setting

as on her own land

seven seas away

In the corner stood our witness

The piano with its

stern, philosophic countenance

European in its temper

Pregnant with sopranos and crescendos

Our homeland

we agreed the horizon

where all the Indians go

after they die

Delicate rings of smoke

rose from coffee-cups

and the songs of silence drowned the piano;

Inside Java House

earth met the sky

us to reach

homeland.

without dying.

LAILA’S CALL

(Dedicated to Mahmoud Abu Hashhash)

O Qais, the eternal lover,

If only you could come out

Step out of your mystical yearnings

Walk out of your longings frozen in verses

And see your Laila, hear her pounding heart

Feel her lamenting soul

If only, Qais, history could release you

And geography could bind you

You, camouflaged in clouds of love

Travelling through time and space

Century after century

Blowing images of Laila into caves and tombs

You fettered in words and epitaphs

Laila stuck forever on the potter’s wheel

Rotating between the cups of your palms

Your fingers chiseling and shaping her forever

But Qais, Laila is whole

As the complete circle of the full moon

A planet amongst planets

Your poems are the gurgling waves of the ocean

Leaping to reach the skies

And withdrawing merely with the reflection

Tired and limp on the surface of the placid waters

Love is a blessing

Says Laila, not a curse

My Majnu, my Qais,

Says she, come to me,

Fear not death,

Your wish for immortality

Keeps us apart.

Contributor :

SUKRITA PAUL KUMAR. Poet and critic. Teaches English at a Delhi university college. Has published three collections of poems in English, Oscillations, Apurna and Folds of Silence. Her major publications include Narrating Partition, Conversations on Modernism, The New Story, Man, woman and Androgyny. Involved in the study of the theory and practice of literary translation. Ismat: Her Life, Her Times was published by Katha in 2000.

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SUKRITA PAUL KUMAR
Poet and critic. Teaches English at a Delhi university college. Has published three collections of poems in English, Oscillations, Apurna and Folds of Silence. Her major publications include Narrating Partition, Conversations on Modernism, The New Story, Man, woman and Androgyny. Involved in the study of the theory and practice of literary translation. Ismat: Her Life, Her Times was published by Katha in 2000.

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