She is one up on death

by Jagannath Rao Adukuri

Yesterday the poet Szymborska died in sleep
Of heavily smoked lungs and yellowed age.
Death's possibilities are immense and other.

Upstairs might not have had enough space
And the moment was not for death to knock.
Like death was not strong enough to swat a fly
In a death be not proud moment of triumph,
When she was immortal, in the very moment.

The business of dying in sleep makes it hard
To pinpoint the very moment of death's victory.
Her immortality remains an open-ended matter.

(Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska died at her home in Krakow on February 1, 2012. She was 88 years old. According to a New York Times obituary “Szymborska, a heavy smoker, died in her sleep of lung cancer… surrounded by relatives and friends.”

"Possibilities" is one of her poems. Another of her poems, "On death, without exaggeration" is being referred to here)

Tree

by Jagannath Rao Adukuri

A girl of woman called from the mind of a child
Beyond hay stacks on horizon rising like temples
Mounds of golden straw for making little houses,
And soft cud for ruminating cows in moonlight .
Tall palms stood in lines on paddy field hedges.
A river snake slithered in the dry plains of gold.

I ask where is girl, body and mind, minus body.
When the mind merely existed the body laughed
Now there is only laughter with no laughing body
Now girl shall be a tree that will do the laughing
Whenever there is a gentle breeze from the sea.

Memory

by Jagannath Rao Adukuri

It is now four in a late dark time
For the memory of a girl who died
Clutching a cloth bundle, flashing
A child's eyes that had gone blank
From a body defiled anonymously
By men with greedy body-hunger .

On the rail track her cloth bundle
Was left with a memory of cousin
A cousin who had often felt a body
Protruding from a bundle of rags
As many hard bones, some flesh.

When body is defiled anonymously
The fire gets put out from the eyes
Embers of a body burning that will
Quickly die out, the ash collected
In a bundle, left on a dry river bed.
The cousin will now collect the fire
From the gray ashes, fill it silently
In the deeper folds of his own cloth
That will burn anonymously with it.

Body burned all night with no mind
That was found missing from its hole
Good that way since they could save
Fire wood, so expensive these days.

The train journey

by Jagannath Rao Adukuri

Together we need a respite from howling

In the inner depths of the train’s night,

Clackety clackety, inside, full with feeling

I stir along with the train and thought.

She the train better stop thinking violent

Not puffing like her coal-eater ancestor

While mind walks slowly like the blue bird

That went up and down on the telephone wire.

Train-fans stir cold wind and winter air

Shaking shadows of several recently fed men

Bringing out ugly sounds from sleep’s depths.

Dreams spoil fun through monster bridges

And dark tunnels in mountain’s green wombs.

She writes her history on two parallel lines

In the black parchment all the while erasing it;

I collect exquisite shadows of night’s silence. 

Trivial

by Jagannath Rao Adukuri

It all seems to be a made up cause
As you perform your age as age says
The body ceases to think like mind
In art of picture making, a light box
To catch a hibiscus in its deep red
To understand the nature of things
Or the art of word making from night
A factory of words, from early sun
A sun making gold leaves of clouds
A skin rising to a goose of cold wind
Just making light of things and airy.

It is not all that important the game
Mothers have devised to keep alive
The babies bawling from their lungs
Not important to hold heads high
On sliding beauty glasses of smiles
On noses softly oozing labor drops
Not important for hands to clap air
Making noises, as if of noses feeling
A sudden gush of water from above.

This word making is a trivial thing
Like babies bawling, mothers crying
To the hem of sarees, in a dusk light
Like mothers crying near the phones
As of recent head colds, their noses
Making many trivial running sounds

About absences of sons in the hall.

The royal palace in Hyderabad

by Jagannath Rao Adukuri

The palace was luminously wet reaching out to sky

In its shadow lay the kings and their faceless women

Whose fine drapery interrupted their noses and eyes

Under many big-vaulting domes and resounding halls.

Their noises went up to ceiling to return empty

Like their noses and eyes lost from their faces.

They were not lost really but had never been there.

When the silks arrived they forgot w omen’s faces.

The women sat there gossiping about other women,

Other women in the harem and their fine draperies.

Their men’s bloated egos did not show on the faces;

Their man’s egos showed on the woman’s stomachs,

On the little heirs to the throne who came from there.

A fine bangle, a glittering necklace and some pearls

Hushed talk about the latest addition to the harem

And the scraps of conversation went on as it rained.

They had no faces for the evening conversation,

Only bodies fully draped in the finest gilded silks.

In the beginning they sat on the ground huddled.

Later the West grew on them in white man’s land

They sat on sofas and high backed chairs presiding

Tea ceremonies just like the sophisticated women.

They still did not have their noses on their faces.

It has come to this

by Jagannath Rao Adukuri

Mother , I see now you are grieving.
There is no compulsion for grieving
A son lost and frozen on to an ice slab
With eyes screwed on a whirring fan.
He had just shown you and the girls
All the stars he could of the dark night.

A pain in the temple rises like the wind
Only to come down like in winnowing
As grain goes into your eyes, an oldness
Disappears in a turban of orange light

A woman of no winnowing consequence
Turns instrument of fiddling and turning
Machine power to harvest wind, to a few
Shadows playing under a giant banyan,
Vignettes of see, not all grand spectacles

At dusk the grain flies , orange sun flies
And the banyan flies, and the pain flies
As much has risen and fallen in temple

The Manikarnika Ghat in Varanasi

by Jagannath Rao Adukuri

These people have come here

To solve existence problems

On the river that washed sins,

Human bodies and buffaloes.

They came from a far off river land

Where sins are equally washed.

They are wearing dark glasses

And their lungis above kneecaps.

They speak an ancient tongue

And eat mounds of liquid rice

But when their boat reaches

Within sight of Manikarnika ghat

They are deeply afraid in their eyes

Like you,me and our ancestors. 

Comedy

by Jagannath Rao Adukuri

This comedy thing plays out clearly

In the down of your throat, the way

You walk and talk in fits in yourself

Flies abuzz, your red scarf waving.

This morning we walked briskly

Explaining these things to ourselves

Our hands quickly went up in the air.

Our throats cleared in anticipation.

Nothing came save a guttural sound.

Since nobody laughed at our joke-

A two rupees joke on cell- phone-

We sat deeply on the foundation,

As our legs dangled in deep space

To the waving grass of the breeze

Showing bits of sunrise in the hill.