Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
for Deepankar Khiwani, author of ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-Aged Woman’
Solihull School, February, nineteen eighty-two.
Seen against a backdrop of wiry trees
And sheets of snow, a frozen quadrangle,
A football field frosted over, our Scripture teacher
Mrs. H., in thermal slacks and unusually high heels,
Looks more desirable than ever, as she instructs her flock
Of fidgety eleven-year-olds, just back from Christmas-break,
To depict in crayon and pencil, a scene from the life of Joseph.
Enslavement and the-coat-of-many-colours
Suggest themselves at once as obvious themes,
Amongst brief thoughts concerning bakers and grapes;
But something about my Scripture teacher’s ineffable rump
Calls to mind the tale of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife.
I put down my colour-pencils and take a deep breath,
Before slipping into my private, contorted version of the tale,
According to which the two protagonists, having made love
Many times over, finally get caught in the act,
And Mrs. Potiphar cries rape in utter defencelessness,
To save herself from being thrown to the crocodiles.
I shut my eyes and play at being either of them in turn:
Now I am Joseph – not lurching back, startled by an
Impassioned tug at his loincloth, as our Children’s Illustrated Bible
Portrays him, his palms retracted in sanctimonious refusal,
But feasting instead to the utmost upon her lips and breasts;
And now I am her, serpentine, venomous,
My breasts slipping out from the papyrus-like coils
Of the same silver gown our Children’s Bible conceals hers in,
My lips pressed firm round his startling member,
Awaiting in ecstatic ignorance some savage enigmatic thrust,
Some cryptic overflow that I imagine as I may
But as yet possess no clear knowledge of –
Bare dunes and muralled walls swinging,
Amidst pulsating hieroglyphs and slavish salivations,
Round pillars rocking, till the Nile
And all the pyramids consign themselves to darkness,
And all Egypt falls asleep to the sound of our moaning.
Outside, beyond the double-glazed windows,
Tall men in black scatter salt on ice. Here,
In Scripture-class, laid out on shelves above the coils
Of classroom heaters, as I stare, amidst premonitions
Of an unfathomable heat, at a blank notebook page,
Wet rows of tiny, fingerless gloves thaw and drip.