J is for Jaw-dropping... n... Journeys

 

Hello and welcome! to another A-Z series on M-i-V... 

All through April I'll be posting on the broad theme of Museums & Monuments Across the World - mostly those I've been to and a few on my bucket list that I haven't been able to visit yet. Museums are one of my favourite ways to get to know a culture, they sum up what those peoples want to preserve and pass onto their grandchildren, the facets they want to show their foreign visitors, how they perceive, present and preserve their own storyline and that of their interactions with the world. Come museum hopping with me!

What does this need a title for?

Everyday's a pasted famous quote -
Al Prufrock or Tagore's Paper Boat
on it's timeline, just in case you think
it's a dead end, dead pen pushing ink,
not a solace, just a flimsy dream
the escape hatch of a digital scream
before it burrows back into the day
and ponders if anything gold will stay
and are there any rare metals at all
in the million, billion plastic dolls,
in the slow pulse of chronology,
in the cell walls of soliloquy.
A sudden buzz on the telephone -
just alive, but also a dead zone.

The death of a poet, no, two, in August

Everything doesn't please me, but some things do.

Granted, the station's lost its coordinates,

the road is a conceit of dirt, and yet -

it pleases me the old bus contains you.

You draw a single, quivery thread of pain

from my blood – weave a tree canopy

overhead; the pride of a flag flying free

from the direction of winds; a quatrain

that's also an anthem of olives, a dirge

for the lemon leaves, for fallen lintels,

ruined doorsteps. You shatter walls of cells

into a lilac leap where stars and hope merge.

Even though the old bus sputters and stops,

then dies. And the station's a long way off.

***

Last time I looked you were a tiny dot,

the bus-stop receding in the rear-view

and then vanishing, like things always do.

But I'd marked, and caressed the exact spot

in the dusty mirror where you had stood.

And it was more than enough to drive on.

But then a passenger screamed. A cell phone

squawked, and all canopies turned to deadwood.

The mirror's empty now, the bus is a wreck,

no station or stop, the horizon's bare -

breathe deep, breathe deep, but there's just no more air!

The flag's an ache because the shape of a speck

in glass will never again be seen, nor heard -

how will this longing ever be measured?

This is a response to "Nothing pleases me" by Mahmoud Darwish (13.03.1941 - 09.08.2008). The second death is Tagore's (07.05.1861-07.08.1941). Both are poets I deeply revere. Both became, in their lifetimes, the voice of their peoples' struggles against foreign powers/occupation. Both shaped identities, both, when they died, convulsed their nation/peoples, both transformed the prevailing literary landscapes, and both died in August. The aftermath of one death I have witnessed personally, and the other I have heard about from my family/community.

~~~

The diptych above was written as part of a MOOC I took last year and forgot about till now. My homage to both poets with it. 

*~*~*

I am finally back to blogging on a regular lappie instead of pebble-sized screens where 'nothing pleases me' in terms of the font size, if you know what I mean. Squint till cross eyed and then manage to decipher half a word, no, I think not, thanks very much.  Sticking to the bigger and less sleek devices. I have a pile of posts and emails to catch up on which will happen over the next week as I settle back into my old mouse potato mode...

Meanwhile, this month there's big news at Write...Edit...Publish... which is joining up with Insecure Writer's Support Group - excited to see where this partnership will lead!

Click on the links and read about the antho contest that'll run from Sept 5 to Nov 4, and the WEP Aug Challenge open right now - join us and sign up, because ooh, the fun is getting thicker!

Long Post Alert!

Google image

Like most Bengalis I have grown up with Tagore, probably heard him hummed by my mother first when I was still unborn.  I certainly remember Tagore poems being recited, and sung as lullabies, and enacted. Told and retold as bedtime stories, on holiday afternoons, snuggling close against my mother and aunts and grandmother, whoever was available.  And years later I have crooned his poems as lullabies to my own son in his babyhood. Whether I like it or not, Tagore colours every perception of poetry that I might grasp.  Two of his poems that were bundled and sung to me as a child are "Shubhokshan" (Auspicious Moment) and its sequel "Tyaag" (Sacrifice), I loved them as a child without really understanding the philosophy behind them, and that naturally deepened as my understanding grew.  Here is Tagore's own translation:

7

O mother, the young Prince is to pass by our door,--how can I
attend to my work this morning?
Show me how to braid up my hair; tell me what garment to put on.
Why do you look at me amazed, mother?
I know well he will not glance up once at my window; I know he
will pass out of my sight in the twinkling of an eye; only the
vanishing strain of the flute will come sobbing to me from
afar.
But the young Prince will pass by our door, and I will put on my
best for the moment.

O mother, the young Prince did pass by our door, and the morning
sun flashed from his chariot.
I swept aside the veil from my face, I tore the ruby chain from
my neck and flung it in his path.
Why do you look at me amazed, mother?
I know well he did not pick up my chain; I know it was crushed
under his wheels leaving a red stain upon the dust, and no one
knows what my gift was nor to whom.
But the young Prince did pass by our door, and I flung the jewel
from my breast before his path. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, from The Gardener.

Tagore says in his preface that the translations are not always literal - the originals being sometimes abridged and sometimes paraphrased. Well, these are both abridged and paraphrased.

I often translate poems of Tagore (and others) when I can't find anything much of my own to say/write.  Here is my translation of this one from the original Bengali, maybe a little longer than it in terms of word count.

Oh mother, the beloved son of the king,

the prince will pass our door
how can I be focused this morning
on mundane household chores?

 

Tell me instead what should I wear

how should I style and braid up my hair
in what colours should I drape my fair
self? Mother, why do you look at me so?
I know where I’ll stand by the window
he’s not going to glance up there
in a  twinkling of an eye this whole show
will be over and he’ll be gone, his entourage disappear
only from some far-away route
the yearning strains of the flute
will waft its lament back to me here.

 

But still, the prince will pass my way

How can I not dress my best today?

 

 

 

O mother, the beloved son of the king

the prince has gone by our cottage
the rich sunlight of this morning
flashed resplendent on his carriage.

 

I’ve flung back my veil, and standing alone

for a split second seen him and then he’s gone
I’ve taken the ruby from my breast and thrown
it on the dust before him. Mother why are you
so amazed? This jewel that I’ve torn from my throat
he hasn’t picked it up, or taken any note.
It’s been crushed to dust, and now only two
parallel wheel tracks mark the dust
what I gave and to whom no-one knew
it reddened the road, then lay hidden and crushed.

 

But still the prince passed by and before him

how can I not throw down my blood-red gem?




 

Fearless (Lucky 786)

Where is this place where the mind is fearless?
every path seems to swerve and lead away
though I try still to hold my head high

can eyes be dried, just like that, tears put away
jerked on puppet strings of love, helplessly high?
can happy love ever walk straight and fearless?

it’s a long road from here, the sun’s fiercely high
no use hoping the timid heart will be fearless
when the teeth of love and loss both gnaw it away

Never fearless, no; but fear still swatted away; and love’s banner held high.

 

Of course, the inspiration for this is Tagore’s famous poem, his dream of an independent, new India waking up free from intellectual or political suppression and fear.  It is still quoted and read widely not just in Bengal but in all free-thinking societies.  His own translation doesn’t do the original justice.  Rhymed poetry can’t really be translated unrhymed and still retain the flavour of the original. Also his Bengali version is more robustly violent, the last line in Bengali reads “strike my country awake” rather than the tamer “let”, but the English was probably watered down for audiences abroad in pre-independence India.  Here it is again:

 

Mind Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up
into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason
has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action-
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.





I wrote this post sometime ago, and my verse is really about the personal fear that stems from vulnerability - the fear of losing loved ones, of changes, of the lack of control over our own fates. 






Shared with poets at dVerse where the prompt today is "fear"