Jeet Thayil

I'm back where my life and I parted ways.
I'm talking to the coffeemaker, to the face
towels folded by the sink, to the air
...

Your lips go from sunny side to suicide in a single click.
You're too fast for any sniper.
You know when to hit the ground and stay down.
When you step out, armies rise up or die by your eyes.
...

At 48, the youngest
director in the history of the Civil
Center for Falconry,
Universal Understanding & Aesthetic
...

Leap tall buildings in a single bound? Forget
you, buddy, I
leap years, avenues,
financial/fashion/meatpacking districts, 23
...

When you stop on Market Street
for more anesthesia,
pick up some supplies
— brandy, papayas,
...

When the flooding in the basement got worse
she slipped into a silly dress

and danced to The Best of Nirvana.
...

Let us govern those who undertake the telling of stories.
Censorship is good governance. Self-censorship is an attribute of the highest civilization.
If an actor speaks of God,
...

Listen! Someone's saying a prayer in Malayalam.
He says there's no word for ‘despair' in Malayalam.

Sometimes at daybreak you sing a Gujarati garba.
At night you open your hair in Malayalam.
...

I was born in the Christian South
of a subcontinent mad for religion.
Warriors and zealots tried to rule it.
A minor disciple carried his doubt
...

Who has done this?
Schoolboys, drained of
all emotion but the one
that'll outlast them,
...

As starlight, as ash or rain,
as a smear on the moon,

as a tree, say a champakali,
...

Nothing here's worth a tick.

I hid everything except the heads. They respect slaughter.

They respect only slaughter. They forget the other things we brought them, the ghazals, the gardens, the ice and symmetry.
...

Deine Lippen bewegen sich von der Sonnenseite zum Selbstmord in einem Klick.
Du bist schneller als jeder Heckenschütze.
Du weißt, wann du auf den Boden fällst und liegen bleibst.
Wenn du rausgehst, stehen Armeen auf oder sterben durch den Blick deiner Augen.
Deine Söldner haben jedes Alter, jedes Geschlecht und jede Religion.
Nichts Gemeinsames haben sie: außer einem Bild von dir,
das in geheimen Medaillons getragen, eingebrannt in ihren ausgelöschten dritten Augen, oder in den Achselhöhlen tätowiert bis zum Haaransatz und zwischen den Zehen.
Wenn du dich anschaust im Spiegel, während du geküsst wirst, pflückt das Glas
seine Augen, denn kein anderes Bild wird je genügen.
Du wirst geküsst, wieder und wieder. Du wirst immer geküsst.
Du wirst von einem Kuss geweckt und schläfst nach einem Kuss ein. Dazwischen, Küsse.
Du erzählst deine Träume so sanft mit betäubter Stimme,
die zu einer anderen Welt gehört.
Deine Stille ist lang und glazial, die Eiszeit verschmelzt den Kontinent mit deinem Atem,
deine Tränen bedeuten das Ende aller Jahreszeiten.
Manchmal, auf einer Rolltreppe, wenn du mit dir selbst sprichst,
stürzen deine ungesagten Worte einen Fremden in Trauer.
Deine Kraft ist nachhaltig und biologisch abbaubar.
Dein Grün wird Plastik überleben.
Du hast die Elektrizität erfunden. Die Stromnetzte gehören dir.
Sie erleuchten deine Pracht, sichtbar von Raumschiffen und Satteliten.
Wenn du die Stadt verlässt, flüstert der Wind auf den Straßen deinen Namen.
Ah, sagt er. Kang. Sha.
Niemand kann deinem Einfluss entkommen.
Einmal, fast verrückt, hab ich es versucht, aber das Gras war zu hoch gewachsen.
Und die Sterne fielen aus ihren Bahnen.
Und Gott atmete ein letztes Mal aus.
Und jeder Glaube auf dieser Welt war verloren.

Ins Deutsche übertragen von Sylvia Geist and Tom Schulz
...

Und was war der Sinn?
Das Leben als rollender Stein.
Gejagt, gesnieft, gespritzt. Jedenfalls stoned sein.
Ein B-Movie, in den Hauptrollen Fremde. Zeit
plattmachen. Die 1001 Wörter für Heroin
durchkauen: eine Sprache für sich. Nichts

mehr kennen als die Süße dieses Drecks und nichts
benennen können als H (sprich: eytsch): Brauner Stein,
Sugar, Scag, Shit, Smack, Junk, Weißt-schon, Heroin,
Ghoda Gaadi, Ganja, Garad, Gesetz, Gott. Der Sinn?
Der Stoff, der Schuss, das abgeschossene Draußensein
im Orbit verrannter, verrinnender, geronnener Zeit,

die wie eine Liebe wiederkehrt, ein Gespenstersinn
wie das Jucken in der Kehle einer blinden Kröte. Nichts
kratzt sie, nichts schmeckt ihr, nichts wärmt sie wie Heroin.
Das Tropfen, das Klopfen, die Eile, das Heilen, der Stein
der Weisen, der dich wälzt, dich verschiebt auf sein
Gleis, auf die dünne weiße Spur deiner abgestellten Zeit.
Als du damals sagtest: „Unser Leben ist aus Stein",
brach in mir etwas entzwei. Die Medizin war Heroin.
Was kann ich noch sagen? Ich kenne den Sinn
der Schädeluhr, ihr Ticken gen Null, wo keine Zeit
zu hören ist, so sacht. Danach das süße Nichts,
das fette Staunen darüber, ohne Schmerzen zu sein

in den Beinen, das Nicken dabei, der endlose Sinn
davon, die heillose Liebe dazu. Warum nicht Auszeit
nehmen an der Bar, warum bergauf mit dem Stein?
Nur noch diesmal was Süßes, ein bisschen Heroin,
um alles, was du nicht mehr brauchst, mit gar nichts
zu ersetzen. Was kann für vertane Zeit die Strafe sein?

Mehr Zeit. Nüchtern wirst du sein, ein ausgespülter Stein.
Wirst die Wörter nicht nennen und weiter nichts wollen,
wirst, den Sinn auf der Zunge, ihn nicht mehr kennen.

Ins Deutsche übertragen von Sylvia Geist and Tom Schulz
...

Nothing here's worth a tick.

I hid everything except the heads. They respect slaughter.

They respect only slaughter. They forget the other things we brought them, the ghazals, the gardens, the ice and symmetry.

It's an affliction to grow up motherless, with your lady mother living beside you.

They have many images, but they have no God. They're fit only for war.

Even the dogs are second rate.

In Tashkent I had no money, no country or hope of one, only humiliation. But among the people I found much beauty. No pears are better.

There are no accidents. There's only God.

Tending to his doves on the eve of battle, my father flew into a ravine at the fortress of Akhsi.

He became a falcon. I became emperor.

Sometimes, when I eat a Kabul melon, I remember my father and you.

I've forgotten more than I've seen, but I haven't forgotten enough.

There's only one way to live in a place like this, with your disgust close at hand.

One night I took majoun because the moon was shining. The next day I took some more, at sunrise.

I enjoyed wonderful fields of flowers, flowers on all sides. I saw an apple sapling with five or six leaves placed regularly on each branch.

No painter could have done this.

I made a schedule. Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday for wine, the other days for majoun.

Your letter puzzled me:

The people are caught between constant spiritual anguish and a faith that will give meaning to the question that consumes them: the dual substance of Krishna, the yearning of man to know God. Between the spirit and the flesh, a great unwinnable war.

Dear friend, write clearly, with plain words. Writing badly will make you ill.

Once, in an orchard, I was sick with fever and vision. I was young, but I prepared myself.

A hundred years or a day, in the end you'll leave this place.

Long ago, my grandfather's face looked into mine, I think with love.

Now when we speak it's of ghazals, of metrics and rhyme or of our most famous massacres.

When he conquered Lahore he planted a banana tree. It thrived, even in that climate.

His memory is so good it gives him a second life. Mine gives only a partial one.

It's no more than I need.
...

At 48, the youngest
director in the history of the Civil
Center for Falconry,
Universal Understanding & Aesthetic
Interest,
he published The Spiritual Uses of Oneiric
Travel. It was wartime,
but there's little trace of conflict
in this odd and beautiful collection
of travel jottings, doodles, and rhyme.
"Everywhere in the old city
there was dread,
a sense of ancient
sympathy,
of inebriated spirits taking the dead,
imperial government
to task, while its citizenry
and civil
servants slept."
In subsequent decades, he refined his view
of history as the art of the impassable.
He wrote that his goal had been
to be wholly adept
at transference, "a bridge between
thought and its correct
articulation."
When the government fell he lost his new
stipend, a palpable
loss, and he went home to die.
It was his last
act of secular defiance.
Varanasi, inauspicious
in the new theology, was a dry
tiered place of souls
whose chance on earth had passed,
who concerned themselves
with "a wider world, a suspicious
heritage,
a secure context for the cosmic dance,
a swift descent, a dangerous old age."
...

Leap tall buildings in a single bound? Forget
you, buddy, I
leap years, avenues,
financial/fashion/meatpacking districts, 23
MTA buses parked end to
end. I leap Broadway,
yoyo to
traffic light, to
bus top, to Chrysler, to jet.
You need a mind of sky, of rubber,
to understand I. You need
silence, cunning. Exhale!
You need to know that everything is metaphor,
that poems sprout
in my hands
like mystic confetti, like
neural string theory.
My brother, Mycroft, is tiny, but a genius,
oh a tiny genius, whose
"art is subtle, a precision of hallucinatory brilliance,"
—that's serious talk, boy—
he's ‘furthermore' and ‘however,' I'm
"know what I'm saying?" and ‘whatever.'
He is the ghost ant, the one who is not
there, unseen until he stops
moving. I am
companion to owl and peregrine,
emperor of air, and I'm loyal
to you my loyal subject, whose hard-won
pleasure I perform,
and though I'm not rich it takes a lot
of cash to keep me
in the poverty to which I'm accustomed.
...

When you stop on Market Street
for more anesthesia,
pick up some supplies
— brandy, papayas,
The Marsh Province Buys,
and oil
for the kerosene lamps.
Or else how will
the mail boat find us when
the power fails,
as it so often
does in these wretched swamps?
I need a hose, 7-gallon pails
(the frangipani's
drowning in the heat),
a large black brolly,
and 2 DVDs: Pennies
from Heaven and Pope Pius:
His Story. When you return, I'll be up
waiting, not tired.
I like it that you're here
helping me cope.
I like to know you're in the room,
a little out of range,
not saying anything
but letting me know I'm not alone,
not entirely.
...

When the flooding in the basement got worse
she slipped into a silly dress

and danced to The Best of Nirvana.
The way she fell on the divan, her

arms open — The best thing for stress —

you could have been some guy brought home
to read Confessions of an English Opium

Eater louder over Kurt's guitars,

some guy who would spend the evening
cross-legged on a tatami mat,

listening for the words between the words.

Youth is wasted on the young
and wisdom on the old, you know that,

like the call of a rare, flightless bird.
...

Let us govern those who undertake the telling of stories.
Censorship is good governance. Self-censorship is an attribute of the highest civilization.
If an actor speaks of God, he will be chastised. He will be refused an encore. If he repeats the speech, he will have his license revoked.
Let us govern those who undertake praise of the next world, since what they say is neither true nor useful to us.
Our best recourse is to be warlike.
We do not deny that storytellers are good at their job and give people what they like to hear. But the better they are, the less we wish our children and men to hear them.
We shall refute their attempts to be wise. We shall scoff when they repeat their vile allegation, Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.
We will do away with the dirges of famous men and leave them for women, and not the best among women either.
Let us abolish those fearful and terrific names, Cocytos, the River of Lamentations, Styx, the River of Fear, Ganga, the River of Death in Life, Lethe, the River of Bliss, Tigris, the River of Affliction.
We shall disallow travel and the mingling of songs.
...