18th September, 2010

 

Later, much later, I will think of life

If things have been done wrong or right

I will assess if they have been just

Or if off-track, then by exactly how much.

But not now.  Now has been given

To just shut my eyes and breathe in

Deep my child, the smell of your wild hair

Tangled in my lungs everywhere.

 

I will sometime sort out my dishevelled house.

Set priorities, turn up the music loud.

Ask after neighbours, marvel at the delicate

Links of nature and the silken threads

That tie all of life and the living in one,

In a giant web endlessly woven and undone.

But not now.  I don’t have time to spare,

To unfasten from the smell of your wild summertime hair.

 

I know that things diverge, relentlessly scatter.

As the web is woven I’m pushed further and further

From its centre, moved away to the furthest fringe.

And that moving away is what joyous living’s

All about, but I can’t think of that now.                                   

The sum of all that I have known and know

Distils into just one truth of which I remain aware,

Deep the smell of my living, my child, in your wild playful hair.

 

The web’s been spun with many perfumes: the fragrance of jasmine

And burnt fuel wisps on hot melt asphalt vying

With wholesomeness of crushed pine-needle smells.

And crystal waters imprisoned in clear plastic cells.

Salty winds and smoky breezes; output from furnaces.

The azure scents of the oceans, and of wildernesses.

Somehow made time to inhale them all, but nothing could compare.

Deep the smell of my world, my child, in your wild sunrise hair.

 

Finally through with thoughts on life, and right.

About equal and justice; I have tried

To read meanings into trite, everyday things.

Tried thinking hard, and then tried not to think.

No matter how weighty, in the end matters passed

Whether in unbroken silences, or in  maelstroms of questions asked.

The only thing that stayed with me right through the years

Deep the smell, my child, of your wild sleep-soaked hair.

Are you surprised at a free form poem here? I do use it, but it's  not exactly frequent. This is a long ago poem which I've dusted off and put up here to mark another special occasion.  In my life, May connects to motherhood in multiple ways and I mark/celebrate them all. 

I used capitalisation for each line at that point, I don't anymore. A poet friend said that to me, I can't remember exactly when - and it had made eminent sense. "You needn't announce the start of each line," she had written, "without capitals the poem flows more smoothly."  Yup, it did and she had a new convert. 

But I've left this one the way I'd written it all those years ago, the capitals intact. Some of the capitalisation feels rather 'shouty' to me now, the poem would read better if they were removed, but write it as it comes means no over editing even though ye olde fingers might be itching to... So...what do you think, should each line  of a poem be capitalised?

Have a great week ahead.

 

A Strange Celebration

 

Image from Freepik

How quiet the house feels, how tidy the room!

Only your bedroom slippers still lie askew

as if they were abandoned, switched out mid run

exchanged for strong and closed from flimsy open –

airport security scans every shoe.

 

Makes sense to keep the footwear light, the sole

limber, the ties simple. I’ve told you this –

chances are you’ll have to snatch at things you want

without breaking stride, instantly pull on

your boots, be travel ready without notice.

 

Have I ever told you? - that motherhood

is an entirely strange celebration

from first baby steps to that last slip-on

each step’s a stepping away, each milestone

an emptier room, slippers flung off mid run. 

Too much has been happening, all good albeit super strange. The offspring left home for the second time yesterday so this is empty nesting 2.0...hmmm...does practice make this perfect? I'm thinking not.  

For those who may be interested, he's reached his destination safely. Which is closer than NC but still a couple of oceans and a couple of dozen borders away and well, the time zone management is marginally less challenging but I'm older and less nimble, so it all cancels out. 

It's been a monthful of celebrations - family reunions, the Durga Puja and then this sudden relocation magicked itself in exactly a week. Stress and exhilaration combined in a mindboggling mix. Strange celebrations indeed. Uber thankful for all of them. 

Hope you've got ample cause to celebrate too this autumn. 

Mother's Day 2016

The year has earmarked days, a quota for

remembrance – fathers; soldiers from the great wars

and smaller battles; women; sisters; mothers;

all manner of ties up on the calendar

for a few hours only, and nothing more.

Your shirt’s loosened, it flutters in the breeze,

billows a farewell. I’ll take the anxieties,

the heartache and the loneliness I’ll keep,

and hand you the excitement as you leave.

It’s one of many partings, nothing more.

We’ll keep it ultra-casual, you and I

cut the drama out in each of our goodbyes

I’ll never let you see my lashes, spiked

wet in disarray, dismay in my eyes.

I’ll say it with a tighter hug, nothing more.

I know you won’t look back, but if you do

I’ll be in the doorway looking straight at you;

wait till the shirt’s a speck too small to show

and its blue vanishes into a vaster blue,

then I’ll turn and watch the phone, do nothing more.

My love’s an amulet, a verse, a charm,

a silken thread against your skin, your arm,

it binds but it also leaves you free - to come

and go, stop at my threshold, but I am

defined and changed by that one thread, nothing more.

In years from now, maybe a decade hence

will you have time to make time for remembrance?

Mark out a certain day in a certain month

and call? And we’ll speak with a wistful warmth

then go back to our days, say nothing more?

A long ago friend, an EFL teacher, taught me what first language interference was.  Only in my case I don't really know how the first language is defined, and she couldn't help me identify it either. Whatever I write in, at that moment it feels like my first language, and I can spot the other standing right there windmilling its arms and trying to get in not one, but several words, maybe even whole sentences in edgeways. It doesn't make for controlled writing.  And maybe it's not even just language but a whole swathe of cultural baggage. First culture interference, more like.

I can see for myself that the above is based loosely on the principles of the ghazal, the radif motif in the repetition at each stanza-end, but the question is what am going to do about it?  Will it get better if I fiddle around with the structure? Will I be able to tweak it even if I wanted to? Write it as it comes is less of a goal and more of a compulsion, how does one begin to change that?

Last month I heard an established senior Arab poet say of a younger poet, that he writes in English but his Arabic shows, and the senior's tone was one of regret -  as if it's a loss if a non-native speaker of English writes in a language other than his mother tongue. As if it's a loss for both Arabic and for the individual.  But people are the way they are, poets are the way they are, may be poems are the way they are too, who knows? And it's probably best to leave them like that instead of prodding them into being something else.

Happy Mother's Day to all mums here, and to those who parent even though they may not be biological ones.

Love-lodestone

My love for you, my Mothers, was the stuff

of deep breaths and deep days and moving enough.

Halting words like grits on the tongue and palate;

and loose ends of your anchal mopping me up.

Write..Edit..Publish...Getting there....but probably in the wrong costume.....

Hi everyone,

 

 

Hope you are having a great autumn/spring!  I had my Halloween post all mapped out neat in my head when I signed up, but then this whole month's been beyond hectic so I never got around to actually putting it down.  Now I’m probably at the party in the wrong costume!  :)

Anyways, I got sent the famous poem, this one here which does the rounds every year about this time, and reading it again prompted a couple of my own.  I am sharing them here because well, Halloween also coincides with the El Alamein battle.  October/November is always a vaguely poignant time.

 

Happy Halloween, Happy Autumn/Spring, and Happy Diwali, whatever you are celebrating! Take your pick of lanterns and lamps, and party!

 

 

 

 

 

Here's my take on

 

 

 

 

 

I.

 

Maybe they still blow, vivid symbols; did he

mean the quarrel to be endless? Does the poppy

only rain blows and mustn’t bloom? Nothing’s seen

between the lines here, except clean

headstones, different wars, same end, same cemetery.

 

A strange knot in the guts, haunting futility

in gaunt sky and earth, twisting tortured sea;

is anyone an adult at eighteen?

Maybe.

 

Things talked over, twiddled hypocrisy

morphs the same conflicts, the inequality,

the son-like forefathers, the graveyard scene.

No poppies bloom in El Alamein

no screens between the stones and me.

Maybe.

 

 

II.

 

 

It’s not the multitudes. It’s the years

carved on headstones, many a mere

eighteen apart, and some blank, unknown.

Some faraway mother’s Jhandu or John

lying unmarked in the desert here.

 

Did they still think that they could hear

the dead son’s voice - that he was near -

coming awake from a dream at dawn?

It’s not the multitudes.

 

Did they tend to forget and still clear

a place, laid meals sometimes, and then veer

back into the truth, sigh and move on?

Now decades ago, the mothers too are gone

to join their sons at the last frontier.

It’s not the multitudes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

W.C - approx 200, definitely less than 1000 :)

All feedback welcome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read the other entries over at Write...Edit....Publish.