#mani rao

[soracities]

You know a language well if it does things you don't have control over. Bring me the words without meanings, words all meanings have abandoned, sentenced to meaninglessness.

Mani Rao, from Echolocation: Poems

[metaphrasis]

“The sky is fitted linen, stretched over sealine without a crease, pegged to the spikes and jags of mountains, kingsize, navy, preparing to be sunshot. Sooner than lovers can hide, no sooner than the taste of stars striking your lips, one by one stunned and falling to light.

It’s all been said and yet, need, blowing between our lips, streams inside a tree. We flowed out of time and back so soon eating eggs our own. Through each other we pass like water.

At the sun to see how it never changes, at the moon to see how it does, algae slipping beneath our feet, roots travelling and dewdrops dying in visible speed. There is no such thing as a circular river.

Unlike bread, the body becomes softer with age. We tag our children with our names, store the plaits of our daughters, stash berries under rocks and look for them later.

Held in the fangs of a wristwatch, a well-worn path of a nail in our veins, heart-hammered time trail.

No matter who two are kissing, eternity arrives, jelly bean eyes black crystal balls. The longer we look, the more we recognize and anything we could say is too obvious. The songs we like are the songs we know, and every song on the radio is about us.”

— Mani Rao, from echolocation

[sacredbathos]

You know a language well if it does things you don’t have control over. Bring me the words without meanings, words all meanings have abandoned, sentenced to meaninglessness.

- Mani Rao, echolocation

[ihopeucomehomesoon]

[book-a-bilia]

Excerpt from Meghadutam (Cloud Messenger) by Kalidasa 

(Translated by Mani Rao in Kalidasa for the 21st Century Reader)

Yaksha, a supernatural being, requests a cloud to carry a message of love and longing to his beloved, who lives in Alaka, a city on the Himalayas. He has been exiled from home for a year, and the separation proves too long to endure. Yaksha tries to urge the cloud to take his message to his lover by describing all the wonderful sights en route to Alaka.

Meghadutam turned out to be even more beautiful than I had thought it would be. Mani Rao’s translation is smooth and flowy; it has a richness to it that just made me want to keep reading. The poem is vivid with imagery and abundant with personifications. All of the descriptions just made me want to go back in time and wander through the forests, the kingdoms and the palaces. Meghadutam is, in a word, exquisite.

[sacredbathos]

Back from the markets of lust, haven’t bought anything. Our trolls rally on the windowsill – the leopard who mates for life, handless martial grey beard, taped up windowpane, ancient ring. Living in the presence of each other’s lives, from order to chaos, dispelling heat. The one star you find and pin with your eyes as I scramble for a wish. We see the lightning together, gasping, lips sealing around a vacuum. I watch you asleep, stealing your time. It rains and rains, the tanks fill up and the grass grows inches overnight. The jealousy because I think you are dying faster, the faint darkness between your lips, the striving for a piece of your skin. You lock me up to make sure I am there when you return. I wait for days to see you, when finally you appear I walk away.

- Mani Rao, echolocation

[pictresque]

You hold on to this cloud, I hold on to that Shouting the shapes over each other’s voices Everything turns to water, darling Tired    sleep The riddle of the moon has been busted Tell me again again again again    why She casts herself on Reality’s constant insatiable shift Why    we take to terraces, gardens Wherever we can fly silhouettes And turning our heads, slightly, in love Try on the moon ring     it never fits Your face, the shadow of a witch No matter how much fed Hound moon is back like appetite Again again again Sleep on the flatbed of stars Sleep on history Sleep in the shape of Pegasus, Orion, Aquila, Cygnus Heaving      net Someone always playing at Vega

Star-Crossed, from Ghostmasters by Mani Rao

[liquidlightandrunningtrees]

No matter who two are kissing, eternity arrives, jelly bean eyes black crystal balls. The longer we look, the more we recognize and anything we could say is too obvious. The songs we like are the songs we know, and every song on the radio is about us.

Mani Rao, Echolocation