“THE POET ” by P.Lal

For all his wild hair like an aureole,
Stammer at parties, slipping from a tram,
Putting off the mending of a sole,
And putting on a mock-heroic Damn!,
He notices the spider’s intestines
Claim harlot, smuggler and blackmarketeer,
And in the clicking grin his eye divines
A moody world of artifice and fear.

Above all, this: When a woman turns
Black clouds of hair, with a rhythmic hand
Weaving their silk in the possessive sun,
He sees her common eyes stretch to a land
O lost, lost; as when repentance yearns
For hope,and love, and finds that there is none.
http://www.geocities.com/varnamala/plal.html

Of course the the poet is talking about a poet. A clumsy poet who wears his hair like an aureole,stammers at parties,slips from a tram and puts off the mending of a sole.  But he is agile and observant ,noticing all those things like the spider’s intestines  claiming harlot,smuggler and black marketeer .In the “clicking” grin he divines a moody world of  artifice and fear.

The most beautiful part of the poem is the image that comes in the second stanza .In this the poet “sees” an exaggerated poetry in the woman’s eyes when they were just common.When the woman turns black clouds of hair ,with a rhythmic hand weaving their silk in the possessive sun,he sees her eyes stretch to a land lost ,as when repentance yearns for hope and love and finds that there is none. Delicious.The poet ,rather too quickly,divines a moody world of artifice and fear.

One wonders if the poet is having a quiet dig at our poet  friend who is spinning fancy  tales about the woman who is standing in the sun  to comb her hair.

” An Old Woman” -By Arun Kolatkar

An old woman grabs
hold of your sleeve
and tags along. .

She wants a fifty paise coin.
She says she will take you
to the horseshoe shrine.

You’ve seen it already.
She hobbles along anyway
and tightens her grip on your shirt

She won’t let you go.
You know how old women are.
They stick to you like a burr.

You turn around and face her
with an air of finality.
You want to end the farce.

When you hear her say,
‘What else can an old woman do
on hills as wretched as these?’

You look right at the sky.
Clear through the bullet holes
she has for her eyes.

And as you look on,
the cracks that begin around her eyes
spread beyond her skin.

And the hills crack.
And the temples crack.
And the sky falls

With a plate-glass clatter
Around the shatterproof crone
who stands alone

And you are reduced
to so much small change
in her hand


http://www.geocities.com/kavitayan/arun_kolatkar.html

You look right at the sky
Clear through the bullet-holes
She has for eyes.

The old woman’s eyes are just two gaping holes filled with empty air,with the hills and the sky.Then the cracks begin around her eyes ,spreading beyond her skin and then the hills crack, the temples crack and the sky cracks and the the sky finally shatters and falls like plate-glass. The old woman herself is shatter-proof and nothing happens to her .Only you get instantly reduced to small change in her hand .It is you who shatter because her eyes are already bullet-holes which are formed with  cracks around the holes.

“On the death of a poem” -by A.K.Ramanujan

Images consult
one
another,
a conscience-
stricken
jury,
and come
slowly
to a sentence.

http://www.geocities.com/varnamala/ramanujan.html

I love the economy of words and the playful pun on the word “sentence” .The poetic process ,if one may call it that,is such that the poem dies still-born at times leaving the poet disgruntled .Some times the sentence may come out after all which will produce a semblance of a poem .At other times the verse describing the process is itself a lovely poem as this one is.

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