Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
1.
‘Ascend the mountain[10] with its roots in hell.’ Still point
in a turning world, it towers incandescent. With cords of
ash Ammaiyar binds me to her bony self, her breath camphor’s
caress, withered breasts pumice. ‘Let us go then you and I
towards the sky. Quester, delete the fake news that blizzards
you to realize your truth[11].’ She flips on her hands, her elbows
bend and straighten. Like a frog released she leaps.[12]
The cords jerk, I’m leapfrogged onto a slide of ice.
Wind roars. Drifts soar. My ghoul-guide breakdances
in shuddering glare. A swan of snow struggles beneath
my ribs of milk, struggles, stills. ..‘Turn back, demon, release
your hold. Let me fall as I’ve done before.’[13] ’…Too late,
Mann,’ she chortles. Somewhere an avalanche descends.
I’m yanked again. Five times, ten. Clouds sleep below.
Before my eyes her inverted face wears a smile of bliss.
‘Ice is the planet’s seat of memory.[14]’Ammaiyar’s mouth
is a rose of flames. ‘As ancient freeze recedes what’s revealed?
Defrost your heart. Let your poisons bleed. You’ve morphed
from king’s minster, lover, poet to the Beloved’s cur[15] Ask:
when all’s lost does anything linger?’ An abyss opens.in my flesh.
‘Pey, you burnt your body’s memory & blew its ash at cosmic
gales. I’m just man, cocksure till a moment ago. Tell
me who I am.’ ‘I’m just an old woman. This you must ask
yourself,’ she says and disappears into the whiteness of the snow.[16]
2.
I’m plunged in a chimney of sapphire ice. I dig shoe hooks
into either side. Try my satellite phone. Not a beep
Shaft of memory, I pray then, speak!
Shapes of lovers with eyes like does appear like foam
nymphs of imagination’s flow. I know their coral lips &
jewelled breasts[17]on which I’ve gorged, perfumed hair on
which I dropped, discharged. Scarlet shadows of princes, priests,
the press, politicos with whom I dined on private jets shimmer
across my glacial chute. I see scenes of my success flicker
as on IMAX screens. And fade. The illusions. My delusions.
I don’t recognise[18] myself here at all. Is my life no weightier
than a microchip? Will my ruby words be deleted or lost?
Is it for this I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed?[19]
Empurpled in regret I shout: paere vaandam oore vaandam,
I seek neither name nor place .Return me to my true self please.
Return me to the one I seek.
A trust of ice rockets me to Ammaiyar pong
jumping on her hands towards Kailasha’s peak.
She cuts the cords, its ash dissolves like dying breath.
I know I’m not the one I was before. I’m something
less & something more. Joy volcanoes –
I melt in self-suppressing rapture.
Perhaps I could live among these gelid blasts as
snowflake settled into rock, as white heron perched
on refrigerated lake, as ice’s memory thawing truths. But –
mystics riddle us about Reality. I’m only Mann. What
if among these roaring hills of snow I found no
peace at last – what then? [20]
________________________________
[10] Mt. Kailasha located in the Tibetan Himalayas is a stairway to heaven. Sacred to Shiva, it lies on the periphery of para-vyoma, the spiritual sky.
[11]Shaiva Siddhanta theology emphasised the cerebral jyana marga/ Path of Knowledge as the mode to Self-Realization over bhakti marga/ Path of Surrender popularised by competing Vaishava theology particularly in the cult of Krishna as Divine Lover.
[12] Ammaiyar climbed the sacred mountain on her hands so as not to sully it with her feet.
[13] Manikkavacakar is celebrated for his intense bhakti/devotion, lyricism and use of Classical Tamil. Thiruvaccikam, Decad 4 XL., ‘again I succumb I gorge plunge can’t stop’. Trans. PSC
[14] Seer and climate –change guru David Foster while meditating in an oxygen tank in the dying Great Barrier Reef had insights which he compiled in the book, Footprints: In search of Future Fossils.
[15] Manikkavacakar refers to himself as a cur redeemed by Siva’s grace. Tiruvanndappahudi, 3. 51-61, ‘ the entire earth you imprint even me a cur directionless licking refuse you shaft in grace’ Trans: PSC
[16] The Other Garden, p 13 Novel written in the last millennium by first time author P S Chabria who is not known to have written another. The book may still be available in makeshift pavement bookstalls.
[17] Manikkavachakar, Thiruvacakam
[18] Only by recognising one’s true self can one Realize one’s inner divinity: Shaiva Siddhantham.
[19] The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock by obscure bard T S Eliot (1888-1965) . The poem was recently discovered as a handwritten note in a Latin version of Virgil’s Aeniad in Merton Collage, Oxfordshire. It has since gone viral, especially among late adolescents.
[20] Anonymous p158, Poetry of the Orient An Anthology of Classical Secular Poetry of Major Eastern Nations , Ed. Eunice Tietjens, Tanka Trans. Gertrude Emerson. (Alfred A Knopf , 1928.)
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