Anand Thakore

So we were to go there together..........our heads dizzy with ouzo,
Lulled asleep by the Adriatic between Brindisi and Patras;
Together, we were to return to that clear blue motherland
Neither of us had known—
A homeland neither Penelope's nor Odysseus', nor even Cavafy's,
But serenely our own—
Sparta would drench us in Mediterranean heat,
The Peloponnesus sparse yet content to be lived in—
For we were to go there not at once
But the long way round; surprised at each halt
Yet certain we were getting there—
To lose one another at Epidavros
And meet suddenly on stage—though unmasked and playing no part,
Our palms not sentient of what they longed to clutch,
But wound around each other like the wand of Aescalapius—
A single healing hand;
History would not tempt us upon the hill of Corinth,
As we scaled the bare crags of Aphrodite,
To share amidst her ruins a hermit's solitary love—
And Athens would find us studiously unclassical,
The caryatids weary of wondering
If they were women or mere columns,
Cured of their longing to be more than pure stone;
No oracles would daunt us, no memories lure us
When we took ship from Piraeus,
Drawn by no sirens but our own low humming,
As the Cyclades wove themselves into a choral chant,
Oblivious of the straits that lay between them;
And no dreams would follow us into Mycenae,
Urging her lions to outleap their stone and roar;
No words echo the stillness of Agamemnon's tomb
As we fell asleep—at once together and alive.
Yet such is the way of journeys—
The best ones are those never begun;
Ithaca, dream-home of the idle, dark hope of the damned, goodbye.....
I will live here alone by this muddy brown sea
Till I outlive the lure of your unseen shores;
For here, between these sand-ribs and high fronds of palm,
There is more to listen for than what cannot be heard,
Here gullcry and wingbeat syncopate at dusk;
And surf murmurs in my ears its wordlesss drone.
...

'To each Begum is to be delivered as follows:
one special dancing-girl of the dancing-girls of Sultan Ibrahim,
with one gold plate full of jewels - ruby and pearl,
cornelian and diamond, emerald and turquoise,
topaz and cat's-eye and two small mother-o-pearl trays full of ashrafis.'

-Babur, royal letter
I was born with a gift but now I have become one.

Kabul is cold.
Hardly the place to be dancing with naked feet.

The women I live amongst understand nothing
Of the craft I was bred for.

I would be lying if I said I no longer miss home,
Though I try not to dream of my years in the south.

The few friends I had died on our way here.

When those geese flew past the fortress turrets last night
I knew what I had guessed often before:

That all flight was impossible.

The stern ridges we crossed to get here,
Stare back at me now like the walls of a tomb.

They speak a tongue I am only beginning to learn.

When the Emperor's men came for us,
I knew our world had ended.

The commander-in-chief had me first,
Then the other soldiers who came to fetch me.

I gave myself with rehearsed compliance.
This ensured it would be over quickly.

I was neither broken nor enraged.
I am used to this sort of thing.

When we were taken from our homes
I pitied myself,

But feel sorrier now for the woman I serve -

Poor, closeted wretch,

Always so full of her busy, curtained self,
With never a glimpse of a simple way out.

Let her believe I beat this living earth with joy-stung feet,
Simply to please her.

That I endure this restive thrumming in the veins,
This dilemma in the muscles, this ache in the nerves,

I leap like a flame then fall like a hunted deer;

That I bind the deadly five before I befriend them,
Rejoice in the four,

I slice the fourteen into gleaming smithereens of time,

I scatter, I glean, then swirl,

And make peace in a glance with the hostile north,
The hallowed east, the lost gardens of the south,

And the ageing west;

That I twist and whirl, I careen and caper,

I admonish a meddlesome god,
Then stare him in the eye,

Only to enliven her listless afternoons.

Let her believe these lissome shoulders ripple,

These elbows lengthen into floating stems,

These fingers blossom into moonstruck lotuses,

At her command.

She has seen too little of either joy or servitude,
To guess what makes me move like this.

I dance because a demon commands me to -

Though I have known, at times, a steady swirling

That opened my ears to rumours in the blood
Of one greater than him I dance for -

But enough of this, I have been summoned.
There is the doorway and this arch,

A cold stone floor in an adjacent hall,
And no time now, for reflection.

There is this stubborn compulsion to move,
This ancient reticence in the muscles,

This fear, this lust and this primeval trembling
At the thought of the demon I serve.

A wreath of wild flowers to tie into my hair,
A cold wind from the mountains,

My string of brass bells,
The quivering of a drumskin,

The hall, the floor, the dance.
...

'It was finally forwarded to Queen Victoria,
arriving in time to become the prize exhibit
in the Great Exhibition of 1851.'
Bamber Gascoigne, The Great Mughals
Here, in this tower,
Bound by gold clamps to thin walls of gold,

I, who am pure mineral, neither mortal nor ghost,
Remain doomed to abide.

Of those who are sent here only the living escape.

I endure the doom of rock,
Inhabited by light and never at home -

No, never, never for a minute
Since I was taken from the stomach of this earth,

Except, perhaps, through the week I dreamed unguarded,
Unpraised and unpossessed,

In the waistcoat pocket of a British lieutenant
Who thought me worthless.

Most men who held me beheld only what I showed them,
And I saw much that their pride could not begin to see,

Though monarch and vassal alike,
Minion and minister, eunuch and page,

Cupbearer, concubine, courtesan and queen,
Only rarely guessed that I was watching.

I have seen too many blindings,

Too many trembling of oil lamps
In mirrored paternal halls usurped by the young:

The banishment of music,
And the nervous weaving of recalcitrant cotton,

Where fountains had leaped and the peacock once danced;

Too many orgies, too much opium, and too much penitence,

Too many depraved flailings in the courtyards of mosques,

And self-assured mastectomies of prurient goddesses,
By incensed, believing hands,

To be moved or repulsed, intrigued or deceived.

These things I have seen, and seen myself too often now,
In the sculpted faces of mute attendants,

While ailing emperors fondled me in slumber,

Then woke before death,
Envious of my transparence, but unaware of my gaze,

Staring right through me with opiate eyes
Or eyes vermilion with wine.

I, who have never cared to be a seer,
Have seen these things

And ask only now,
To be sheltered from the light that can never be mine.

Return me to the mines,
Carry me back to the dark that scorned me.
...

One might have been born for such sharp alignment:
The white curve of an arch quietly concentric

To the bowl of my skull, my knees midway
Between a pair of columns, the feet of a chair

In line with my palms, as walls and bookshelves,
Window, ceiling, lampshade and guitar

Converge silently round the axis of my spine.
Now couched on straw matting and niched in wide spaces,

The body might even be a hub of strong forces,
A pivot or a nucleus but for which

These walls might give way, these rafters cave in.
The stone Buddha on the shelf no longer

Asks me to probe myself; nor does the jug on the table
Urge the eye, to forage for any meaning

Beneath its jet black. The smooth curves
Of its sides would have me stay as I am,

Wide-eyed and becalmed by the surfaces of things
Willfully arranged to centre me;

And it might be wise, if I could, to stay true to their will;
But I have only to shut my eyes to know at once

That I am a vast frozen mountain thawing in the sun,
Huge, heaving chunks of me breaking off at random,

Crashing with a thud into the river below;
The strong, single-minded river,

That is always letting go of itself,
That may possess no single centre of gravity,

And knows no direction but downhill and seaward.
...