Poetry Focus: Language for a New Century; Contemporary poetry from The Middle East, Asia, and Beyond; Edited by Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal, and Ravi Shankar.
Rather than comment extensively on each piece, I’ve decided to cut out a lot of the legwork (my notes, comments, criticisms, etc) and provide you with more frequent updates of poetry I think is neat and worth sharing. This should take away a lot of the anxiety surrounding making updates, along with providing you with a lot more to read!
There are far too many excellent poems in this (thankfully extensive) tome to fit even a twentieth of the best ones into a Poetry Focus, so here’s just a few I’d left crinkled pieces of paper, chewing gum wrappers, and bus tickets sticking out of for further reading, while marching through it on my bus journeys into and out of work over the past few weeks. The next several Poetry Focuses may well draw their sources from this very same book - as there are a vast array of poets and poems to cover, and as I can’t reach them all, I highly recommend that you please go and buy the book if it piques your interest :)!
The Sentry at Mutianyu Speaks to the Astronaut,
by Paul Tan
I watch strange creatures unfurl
with each labored breath
and think of your dragon's flight,
launched to such fanfare.
At the edge of the kingdom,
language is pointless,
even if our lips were not blistered,
our tongues frost-dead.
These vats of oil dispatch flames
to the sky. In blazing sequences,
we send stories to the capital.
What cosmic language do you see?
Can you see me, nameless sentinel
on this endless line of stones?
Are there marauding barbarians
in cold outer space?
You and I have linked destinies -
we puncture small holes
in the wintry darkness against
strange winds and shifting stars.
We obey the emperor's bidding,
do not think of earthly rewards;
the festooned laurels
we will save for another life.
Author's Note: Mutianyu is a stretch of China's Great Wall, seventy kilometres north-east of Beijing. China launched its second manned space mission into orbit in October 2005.
(apologies, this was the only picture I could find of him online)
Rain and Storm,
by Buddhadeva Bose
Rain and storm, rain and storm, night and day.
The day gray, barren, dark. No light, no
shadows either. Just rain's haze, the obscurity of clouds,
and the groan of trams, the rumble of traffic.
In the sky - a muted crying. In the wind - long-drawn sighs.
Long, long day. How much longer to night?
The hour weary, the moment sluggish. The rattling of time's chains
unending, unwearied.
Night. Emptiness within doors, darkness without.
Rain and storm, rain and storm.
Empty, empty heart. Failed failed night.
Just the furious city's sleepless snarl.
Emptiness in the heart, moans in the city, darkness in the sky.
Shadows, gusts of wind, voices,
murmurs, angry choked voices, elongated sighs
in the city, in the empty room, in the rain-dripping darkness,
in the clanking of time's chains - all night, all day.
The day empty, quiet as a stagnant pool. The night mute too. There's
nothing. Absolutely nothing. Creation's face
is covered with rain's gray sheet, with the windy city's
tormented voice. There's nothing. I am alone. All alone.
Captive like a blind fly on time's enormous wheel. The window
to the universe closed. The day like a stagnant pool,
dark, stifled. The night
like the bottom of an old forgotten well. And loneliness, interminable.
In the streets - crowds, bustle, madness. In offices, parks, restaurants -
work, play, getting drunk; gambling, gin, siestas
after a bone-breaking week: all indistinct, cramped.
The city numb. Rain, rain. In the streets
the jostling of shadows, the boneless procession of nightmares.
Shadowy Calcutta, without a body, without a skeleton:
irresponsible, wayward
like a dream. Myself a shadow too, trembling at the touch of a breeze
upon the wall, behind the curtain. Within my breast swing
rain and storm, rain and storm, night and day.
Translated from the Bengali by Ketaki Kushari Dyson.
The Wolves are Roaring,
by Chuan Sha
The wolves are roaring,
beyond the deep sea
and the end of wilderness,
craving the juices
of fish,
of beasts,
and drops of human blood.
The wolves are roaring,
beyond the depths of the heart,
on the tips of their sharp teeth,
savoring the bones
of fish,
of beasts,
and dreaming a thousand-year dream
of licking
a human heart.
Translated from the Chinese by Liu Hong.
So far no one had
any worries at all for me.
Where and how a mypoic member of the family lives -
this never bothered anyone.
The sons and daughters assumed
in whichever room Dad was present
he was surely with his books. Watchful.
Only at times of dinner and outing
the wife gives a little reminder
and says, rise you . . .
as if the lady was nudging a stone to roll on and
to give it a bath.
Once I had finished my meal
everybody in the house would flock together
bend over the dining table
as if flocks of hungry wild geese
had descended on Medi haaor making their own calls.
The sounds of their indiscriminate devouring
I could hear from the adjacent room
while smoking my cigarette.
Everybody reckoned I was not in their party.
How easily they have arrived
at the real truth about me.
A person who has.
No party
no power
no movements
lives in our family.
My wife though, didn't want
to reach any decisions about me
the reliance that grows out of living together fifty years
she does not have it.
Who knows -
she perhaps thinks I have hidden under my pillow
disasters that destroy relationships.
Hence I have no sleeping malaise.
There is no end to my wife's complaint -
I get to sleep as soon as my head rests on the pillow
that it could be a matter of complaint,
I never knew.
She used to say -
I slept like a beast
and dreamt while awake, all day long.
My married wife
has no doubt that
I am not a real human.
She though has not much complaint.
Of late she is scared for me
she reckons - I keep on sleeping day and night
I sink deeper into slumber
even when my eyes are wide open.
I wouldn't respond to treatment
she knows that too.
She wants to wake me up.
I ponder should I rise from this deadsleep
by any heavenly reason
shall I find
my family and relatives
my wife
in their former locations?
Translated from the Bengali by Quader Mahmud.
Author's Note: Haaor is a natural lake.