}} FLIGHT by Priya Sarukkai Chabria |

Poetry at Sangam

SangamHouse

 










FLIGHT by Priya Sarukkai Chabria

Argo’s rocket fuel is exhausted. Solar panels dead. Communication lost. I drift in space
Below
Earth spins in sapphire and nacre clouds, all allure.
Home’s the place of no return.

Is this how I’ll end my days? In a spaceboat directionless amid thronged stars and scattered emptiness?

Flashes. Dashes. Orbital lidar streaks. What’s that oncoming blaze?

That woman, who I created through song
on another earth
approaches
in her light![21]

Her shuttle docks
with mine.

Beautiful, more beautiful than my ruby words shone
are her eyes. She drifts to me.

I’ll glide you through the void, she says, slipping
into Command. Strap down. We enter warp speed.
The familiar jolt through bone and marrow, and fresh this pierced heart.

In velvet depths stars new born shiver
like a lamb between two wolves,[22] rays from exploding
suns shoot through our craft, ourselves, light flowers that bounce.

Trust me, Shiva-Anbu[23] says. Remember you
wrote about me .Intimately.

A tribute, true to you.

My sex, you said, was a bud[24], dark sepals
concealing petals of gold You exposed me
to every reader. For which, take this.

I’m shot into zero gravity. Panels zoom close as mountains during descent. Each knob a peak. Each screen a plateau. I bruise myself on the quotidian. Again. Again. Again. Again.

Okay. Descend.

I’m dumped into my seat. Craft’s in a tunnel of warp that does not stop. In this ceaseless shaft dimensions shift. Time laughs.

When will this end?

It doesn’t. She hums Ave Maria under her breath.

Light soft and brilliant. Caressing as a kiss, as through deep water, through[25] some heavy thing. Reflections ripple, each chiming like a note. Each a clump of dazzle dancing.

She takes my hand. Binds them in threads of light. Blinds my eyes with rapture.

You body is the boat, Mann, get it?
Your only vehicle, your last solace.
You’re the boatman too. And
the other shore. There’s nothing more.
Man whose words are rubies –hear it sing. 

In all my life in all my journeys this
is all I’ve sought.
I weep cradled in endless love.[26]

 

________________________________

[21] Celebrated Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265- 1321). Best known for his three part epic poem Divina Comedia/ Divine Comedy, which narrates the journey of the soul seeking salvation. Though heavy in Catholic theology it is nevertheless considered the greatest work in the Italian. Inventor of the interlocking terza rima rhyme scheme.
[22]ibdi. Divina Comedia, Paradiso,Canto 4
[23]In his lesser known, eroticised and densely layered poem, Tirukovayair Manikkavachakar conceives Siva’s compassion embody as the divinely beautiful, Siva-Anbu/ Siva’s Grace who guides the seeker towards boundless love. In its secular reading the heroine is an unnamed woman of unsurpassed beauty who hero must win. His poem largely follows the structural conventions of Tamil Sangam (2BCE-4CE) poetics.
[24] Manikkavachakar, Thrukovaiyar/ Sacred Love Songs
[25] ibdi. Divina Comedia, Paradiso
[26] Mannikavachakar, Thirukovaiyar, 4.9

 

← Priya Sarukkai Chabria