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Literary Review
Letters to Gandhi
Poems by MEENA ALEXANDER
VIJAY BAGODI/ THE LITTLE MAGAZINE (MIXED MEDIA)
Red Bird
A red bird shoots
through a cloud of leaves.
The sky is filled with sparks.
I sit eating waterchestnuts
These are the best
years of your life.
Whose voice is that?
The nuts are pale
as running milk,
their lids, bruised green.
A boy with brown eyes,
wields a knife, sets it all
at my knee. Madam
these paniphal
are for you Eat please
I sit in the light
of a boy's eyes,
chewing waterchestnuts.
The shed where they raped
the women is far away.
Far away the flung bones
piled in the shape
of a cross.
This is my country.
I was born by the Ganga
close by as a bird flies.
VISHAWJYOTI GHOSH/ THE LITTLE MAGAZINE (INK ON PAPER)
* * *
Amrita
1.
I was dressed
in a fine muslin
sari over which
I wore a fur coat.
Behind me an old
man with camera.
Picture perfect
nothing
cast a shadow.
2.
My father
Umrao Singh
fasted for
fifteen days
took a photo
of his self
in skimpy
loin cloth.
Waist delicate
as a heron's neck.
Later my nephew
played with light,
set us edge
to edge.
In time's transparency
father and I
shone bright.
3.
Nights I get no rest.
A rubber ball
bounces off
Parisian tapestries,
lands in my fur coat
splashes me.
Hold me
hold me a child cries.
My name is
Yunus.
Yunus can you hear me?
He stands there
half naked,
his green shirt
torn, flapping.
His belly and ribs
smoking.
He skips away.
I see his bottom
burst like a raw fruit
with the flames
they tossed him in
I put out my arms
to touch him
but father's
tripod
trips me up.
4.
I want to whisper
I am Amrita
sweet
as burnt gold
in the dargah
of Wali Gujerati.
Here are my paints
my brushes
bright as bone.
Come to me.
(Note: Inspired by the digital photomontages of Vivan Sundaram's "Retake of Amrita". I imagine Amrita Sher-gil speaking after the Gujarat atrocities. The child Yunus I saw in Queresh relief camp in Ahmedabad in September 2002.)
In Naroda Patiya
Dark eyes
the color of burnt
almonds, face
slashed, lower
down where her belly
shone
a wet gash.
Three armed men,
Out they plucked
a tiny heart
beating with her own
No cries
were heard
in the city.
Even the sparrows
by the temple gate
swallowed their song
* * *
Searching for a Tomb Over which They Paved a Road
Where is the tomb
of Wali Gujerati?
Gold leaf scatters
in the wind.
His poems cry out for feet
hands, throat
for genitals and mouth.
Surat has forgotten him.
He sang her praises
to the moon.
And now?
Where is my skin
my bones?
I am the poet of a city
in ruins
burnt by the sun
bound to the moon.
The reeds
by the river
are lashed to swords
My dust is in the mouth
of the bloodied rose.
(Note: During those dark days in Ahmedabad, , the tomb of the 17th Century Muslim poet Wali Gujerati (also known as Wali Deccani) was torn down by Hindu extremists.)
* * *
Letters to Gandhi: A Poem in Four Parts
Lyric with Doves
I set doves on
my writing fingers
feel them fly.
The page is hushed.
From way beyond
hyenas howl.
There is too much
riveted into death,
What they bruised
and broke
— thighs arms
lips throat
precious inner organs —
is brushed
with brilliant ink,
cavalcades of pain
It rains in your city.
The heart's
flung back.
Torn bodies
clattering
in an ox drawn cart.
Slow Dancing
Dear Mr. Gandhi
please say something
about the carnage in your home state.
How did you feel when they shut
the gates of Sabermati Ashram
that February night
and the wounded clung outside?
What has happened to ahimsa?
Is it just for the birds and the bees?
What lips, what soles
swarmed across the river?
Is it hot on the other side?
O so many questions sir,
I cannot help myself
I cannot shut my mouth.
It's hard to hear you,
birds peck at sounds
maggots gnaw since
even syllables have skin.
The kingdom of heaven
is tiny as a mustard seed
and you have crawled therein.
Mist pours from mango trees,
the moon soars in a sea of blood.
I see you at the rim of heaven
grown older still, bewildered, stooped
dhoti flecked with drops of mud,
face seared by a moon
that has nothing
except its own inhuman glow,
the archipelago of light
afloat in monsoon air
where souls frail as pin pricks go.
Dear Mr. Gandhi
please talk to me now.
I am slow dancing
in the the dark
with the untimely dead
and that is all I know.
Bengali Market
Dear Mr. Gandhi
It was cold, the day the masjid
was torn down stone by stone,
colder still at the heart of Delhi
Ten years later entering Bengali market
I saw a street filled with bicycles
girls with rushing hair, boys in bright caps
I heard a voice cry
Can you describe this?
It sounded like a voice
from a city crusted with snow
to the far north of the Asian continent.
I saw him then, your grandson
in a rusty three wheeler
wrapped up in what wools he could muster.
Behind him in red letters
a sign: Dr. Gandhi's Clinic.
So he said, embracing me, you've come back.
Then pointing to the clinic —
It's not that I'm sick
that gentleman gets my mail and I his.
That is why I am perched in this contraption.
I cannot stay long, it is Id ul Fitr.
I must greet friends in Old Delhi, wish them well.
Later he sought me out in dreams.
in a high kitchen in sharp sunlight
dressed in a khadi kurta, baggy jeans.
He touched my throat in greeting —
Listen my sweet, for half of each year,
after the carriage was set on fire
after the Gujarat killings,
I disappear into darkness.
In our country there are two million dead
and more for whom no rites were said.
No land on earth can bear this.
Rivers are criss-crossed with blood.
All day I hear the scissor bird cry
cut cut cut cut cut
It is the bird Kalidasa heard
as he stood singing of buried love
Now our boys and girls
take flight on rusty bicycles.
Will we be cured? I cried
And he: We have no tryst with destiny.
My hands like yours are stained
with the juice of the pomegranate.
Please don't ask for my address.
I am in and out of Bengali market.
(Note: In September, 2002, I was in
Ahmedabad to visit the relief camps. Later,
the voice of Anna Akhmatova ("Instead of
a Preface", Requiem) with a question someone
asked her, echoed in my ear: "Can you describe
this?" In "Bengali Market" I hear
Akhmatova's voice, coming from
the far north.)
Gandhi's Bicycle (My Muse Speaks to me)
I come to you with a jute bag
filled with bits of cloth
marked with the colors of heaven.
I have meditated long and hard on the poems
you read at the Akademi.
In `Ancestors' you have grandparents
male and female on wheels
cycling around ground zero.
Bipedality is no longer possible
The earth is cut from underfoot
Have you seen the photo
of Gandhi on his bicycle, in South Africa?
He tried to walk the earth
the British made fun of him
also for the way he dressed.
Catastrophe drove you to
a grandmother in a sari on a bicycle.
furiously pedalling where the towers
once stood, also a grandfather, I presume
with brief case marked `Lyric'.
But don't lose sight of Epic.
That very month, that very day,
September 11th in 1893,
Swami Vivekananda stood in Chicago
a dark rose on its stalk.
Chicago is in the mid west of course —
Sisters and brothers of America — he began
and there was thunderous applause.
How many would dare say that now.
But we need to say that you and I
even the teeth of war. Come closer now.
do you hear the still sad music
of children killed in Godhra and Naroda Patiya
Come closer to this table, cut
from a tamarind tree in my grandfather's garden.
Each poet needs a table
to lay her wares out, don't you agree?
You can write your poems here
so they gather the sour sweet light of eternity.
One last thing, please don't
keep writing letters to Gandhiji.
He has gone through so much already.
Sometimes I dream he's hidden behind us
in a cupboard with three doors
where he's also stashed his bicycle.
Meena Alexander's poems have been widely anthologised and translated. Her book of poems Illiterate Heart (Triquarterly Books/ Northwestern University Press, 2002) was a winner of the 2002 PEN Open Book Award. Her memoir Fault Lines (picked by Publishers Weekly as one of the best books of 1993) will be published in Fall 2003 in a new, expanded edition with a Coda entitled `Book of Childhood'. Her new book of poems Raw Silk is forthcoming from Triquarterly Books/ Northwestern University Press in 2004.
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