Dileep Jhaveri Poems

Trees of utter lies,
leaves of flames,
flowers of ash.
Lead me, someone, out of this forest.

I have wandered forever,
carrying a couple of damp words,
stumbling across steam-blinded tracks,
feet slashed by
rusted vessels, broken tiles, half-cooked meals,
tattered clothes, roofless screams, broken bones,
stooped bodies that turn to stone when you touch them.

I roam every day
like a ghost from some stammering past
or some endlessly hungry, never appeased
unknown evil deity
blind to himself,
a lost sun
or death.
From these woods
of ulcerous, oozing, burning, cracked mirrors
someone
lead me, out of this forest.
...

For those annihilated in riots, enduring and upright,
to whom history has granted no justice whatsoever
Long before I started scribbling letters
you were already ink.
You were the forest
which had proliferated
around the trifling shoot that was I,
blending earth, sunlight, water for me.
You were the language
around my first utterance.

You were smoke, steam, lava
sulphur, phlegm that was coughed out,
carbon chunks, chlorophyll,
bubbling blobs of fat,
a slithering mesh of fibres
clinging together
to forge fragile protection for life.
Even before the senses clutched at colour, smell,
you, as language, were alive to the unspoken word.

Limestone megaliths
tiny seashell
bones.
You were blind rain thunderous lightning shining steel pulverous rust
radiant blood at the threshold gaping wounds.
Dry dust a grating mass of clay
swirling on the cosmic potter's wheel
splattering, spiralling and capsizing within itself,
hidden ultimately in invisible blackholes.
Retching in hollow depths
you were the scarlet scream of birth
streaming in particles and waves,
the black howl of death.
You were the primal language of living and nonliving.

Weavers, blacksmiths, cobblers, carpenters, tailors, butchers,
water carriers, stonemasons, bricklayers,
you are the poor itinerant artisans
whose single day equals my whole life
I am hand you are fingers
I am palm you are wrists
I am arm you are shoulder
You ploughed the fields you hauled water wheels
you hammered in bamboo posts, made grass roofs,
screens of sackcloth that masqueraded as walls,
doors of tin.
Inside
a fistful of rice simmering over a smoking fire
a couple of meat morsels scallions fish garlic
Later, cuddling the floor,
dream-draped,
in a script dissolved in sleep
you write names of several
crippled, craven, ephemeral people,
whole, unknown, forthright
where you would possibly also find my name.
Within a scatter of disarrayed vowels,
bereft of rhyme and rhythm,
you are that language.

You were born just like me,
sucked, wailed, piddled, laughed
burbled, licked toes, bruised your knees, took faltering steps
glimpsed the first mirror - marvel you found yourself
yanking fistfuls of hair you found yourself
dismembering a doll you found yourself
reaching for a naked flame thinking it a goldfish you found yourself
forlorn on forest treks
wandering alone on borders
jostled in crowds
stifled in local trains
tethered to wheeling grindstone and oil press
and yet dreaming you discovered self.
That self is the man.

Other sounds preceded language:
chirp warble trill twitter croak bark bray howl
sneer shout scream screech wail moan
whine wheeze sigh silenced in suffering.
You are that language.

Peacock, crane, partridge
Rhino's horn tiger's nail blackbuck's pelt elephant's tusks
Panther crocodile turtle shark dolphin whale -
I wish to speak for them all,
so that the forests of ancient teak
and pine and oak and sandalwood
echo with the murmur of tender foliage.
Before I attempt to utter my first words
you are hacked and burnt to black ash.
You are my ink.

Your dupatta, your bushshirt, your curtain-fringe, your floor decors,
your moon, stars, sun, and in the midst of your glittering colours my name suddenly
turning up from somewhere. Your half-nibble is my flesh-gulp of cool water,
down your throat is my blood. Your cramped strength, my bones.
Your sweat is my lustre.
Your faith, your dreams are my existence. Born over centuries
you kept dying, hoping that surely someone will be born to
narrate your tale. But how can a dimwit like me decipher
and articulate your violently shattered words? I do not
have the speech to transilluminate your truth. I have only the facetious
gestures of a deaf-mute. I join my trembling hands. I lower my
head, close my eyes. And with twitching lips, whether audible or not, say:
FORGIVE ME.
...

Look, I'm an old-fashioned sort.
I say the fire's place is in the stove
or in the mud lamp in the alcove
or in a lantern.

Of course, the fire goddess might have wandered
as a child, naked from forest to forest in ancient times
or she might have rolled in the grasslands
in the yet unworded confusion
of first-flush, gooseflesh youth.
Or she might have danced in abandon,
flaming to love, hugging to her heart
the lava spewing from an erect peak
glowing with the revelation of orgasm.

But the blazing lava has long since frozen
on rusty roofs, the forests have shrunk
to worm-eaten rafters. And the grass
is a threadbare thatch where people
with dry hair, dull eyes and reeking armpits
huddle around a dented pot of rice.
In their withered bellies
fire's cousin, hunger, blooms.

Now fire, hunger's cousin, instead of feeding
her desires, throws away her shame,
runs naked down the avenues, screaming.

Grab that wanton by her arm,
drag her by her unkempt hair,
smother her with dust
and tie her, cow-moaning,
to a pyre in the burning ground:
all alone, by herself.
...

There's heaps of stones,
Ram, now come out and play!

The moon's friend, the mirror, lies shattered.
The ocean's rubble is scattered all over.
Pips lie strewn in unploughed fields.
Fallen feathers flame in the sky.
I want to hold something, to connect, to find wings,
to mingle with something, to let fly.
What starts as a tossing of pebbles
grows into a roaring torrent of sand, fire, lava.

To float a bridge across the sea,
sure, there's heaps of stones.
Ram, now come out and play!

Heaps on heaps of ashes,
there are waters, there is blood,
breaths are whirling on the potter's wheel
lumpy clay-dolls have built castles of sand.

Now there's heaps of stones.

Ram, now come out and play.
...

We fixed the wall
when Seema was born.

There's a calendar, a poster
with a deadly Terminator of a movie hero
and two embroidered hares or so

When Sameer was born
we put in a glass window

A torn bed sheet that served as a curtain,
the tinkling sound from the paanwallah's shop
and late into the night, the light
of the street lamp settling down
and refusing to leave

The third time in the month
A miscarriage

The scattered debris
of unrecognisable household things.
Rags, tatters, bricks, bamboos,
the mirror, soot,
cinders smouldering in a ditch.

The tin sheets of the roof
were rotten.

The same old sky.
...

1


At times it happens
That pen touches paper
And the stars leap up but the dew stays where it is.
Encircling the verdure flowing in leaf-veins
Are thirsty particles of sunlight,
Crowding around like a herd of deer.
Ink changes into peacock plumage,
White turns into a mirror,
And ancestral faces glow in the mirror,
Clad in the laughter and dust
Of children at hopscotch;
The sleeping snow-covered beauty levitates;
A chance digit turns into a birth date
And lights up the sky
With Diwali sparklers,
Like a magician's wand.
After the camera-flash
The primal dark whirls around in
Fiery concentrics;
The descending dark is pierced by tracer bullets
Which turn into doves at the mumbled
Mention of the divine.
You get lost in the black and white
Of hide-and-seek;
Yet you suddenly find
What memory had lost;
Love on a garden bench
Turns eternal in a rose-trellised window,
In a bed of jasmine
Ending up in a garlanded picture frame
Of sandalwood hanging on the wall.
Fingernails grow
Wrinkles deepen
The forehead recedes
Vision turns dim
And the self is not visible.
Truth that had slipped from the hand
And been dragged across the sea-floor,
Returns like a ship with twelve sails
Bulging in the wind,
And cutting through the rushing tide.
Don't forget then
That this is the magic of poetry
And stars, dew, seasons, truth, falsehood, love
And paintings by the blind
And dances by the limbless
And dwarves plucking fruit from tall trees
Are mere jugglery.
If you allow yourself to be mesmerised thus,
It is the end and the curtain comes down.

Lifting the curtain, poetry beckons
The one who has stayed sitting even after the play is over
Without having applauded,
And introduces him to the words
Engaged in the exercises behind the curtain.

Who, apart from words -
Uncut, desireless, purposeless, weightless, homeless words -
Will join the unending bankrupt drama company of poetry,
To be needlessly abused and destroyed?





2


Poetry was once preserved in song and dance.
Some used to grumble even then:
"Why this convoluted cacophony? Why not speak straight?"
When writing emerged there was a scream:
"Gone is the music of sound coiling inside the ears -
and now these twisted strokes spiking vision."
With hammer and chisel young poets transfixed
the torrents of their inspiration on stones,
and carried, hearts pounding, the lithic manuscripts to the critic.
"Ah, stones are written into my fate,"
groaned the critic's wife.
During seasonal cleaning of the house
she would exchange the heavy stone-slabs of poetry
for light kitchen pottery from junk shops.
(Calling out, "Catch!" the editors would hurl rejected manuscripts.
The poets had to be wary like hunted hares.
You can also imagine the din in Stone Age mushairas.)
Even now some of these slabs turn up
from palace plinths, fort turrets and temple walls.

Travelling distances when not honoured in his home
or when exiled for offending priest or prince,
conveniently moulding history doused in blood,
poetry had to be carried in clandestine baggage.
So poets started writing on leaves.
The stone-worshipping prophet-poets
with ashen brows and beards thundered from the mountains:
"How many trees will be denuded by these avant garde sinners?"
They wouldn't have dreamt of the arrival of paper,
on which ink would dribble from the quill like blood.

Pouring his sorrow out on paper, a poet
would exclaim with joy, "Oh my God! What have I done!"
and proudly affix his signature.
While aware of ambiguities inherent in words
another would declare without signing
"These words are not mine, holding my fingers, Allah has traced them."
And cackling with laughter the Devil erupted as the printing press.
How can there be anything authentic
in a script where the letters are captive to the Devil?
What happens to the poet's own curvaceous calligraphy,
the eagerness obvious in his sketchy scribble,
the innocence with regard to spelling and syntax?
From this mess of printed poems
how do we unearth the face of the poet?

Still poetry continued to be penned and printed
in aperiodic tabloids, little magazines, weighty journals, newspapers
slyly from the underground, brazenly in markets,
in wars against slavery and poverty
rebellions against whiskered or knock-kneed tyrants,
from scaffolds, facing firing squads, petrified in gas chambers,
in penny cinemasong booklets, street corner notice boards, parliaments
from the stinking maws of bearded ogres,
or expectations of the bald,
in the shifty strips at the bottom of television screens.
Poetry is LOST, LOST, LOST -
one hears such cries every day.

And yet plugging his ears,
clenching his pen between his teeth,
with elbows holding the paper close to his chest
the poet strives to rise again
and before him looms
the computer.
...

I am amused:

Nobody has even the haziest memory

Of my father's Grandpa.

And yet his sword is still preserved.

Blunt.

And even now on its hilt

A delicate pattern of leaves and flowers

Is faintly visible.

There are stains

Hidden behind the tattered loyalty

Of the scabbard's silk and leather.

Are they marks of rust or blood?

Who Knows?



Anybody would be embarrassed of the rusty sword.

And who would not be ashamed of a bloody one!

I am abashed by the sword itself

That too still retained!



Those who will address my son as Grandpa

Perhaps will discover

A pen belonging to his father preserved still

When forest or ponds or squirrels or migratory birds

Must have become dried stains

On the rusted surface of barren paper.

Nobody would have even dimmest memory

That

Poems were written with that pen.

Nobody would ask what poetry is.



And yet, picking that pen

Someone would draw a petal of Peony flower

And write P for the first time

And proclaim perhaps

I am ashamed of my ancestors

?

Translated by The Poet
...

Trees converse with each other

One tree bends a branch trembling with nascent leaflets to other

The other steadily holds up a nest

One shows green lichen spreading on its brown bark

Other has caterpillars crawling over its trunk

One turns its foliage from the other to share sunlight

Under the earth the other tugs its roots to where dampness is

Trees write also, on the sheets of winds

One has to know the script of fragrances

and dew, raindrops and snow as well

They paint on moonbeams and lake waters

As a child how often you kept awake

and left for solitary wanderings!

True, the squirrels do not scurry over our tables

nor do the birds perch on the chairs

But we rejoice making wooden toys

of birds flapping their stringed wings

Dig up clumsily carved bull-carts from ancient ruins

We have played with boats, cars, trains and aeroplanes of wood

And of course, the wooden soldiers with wooden swords

And prayed to saints fashioned from logs

and cut a cross from a tree

And now we beg forgiveness from this paper
...

Making a chair is a most natural thing

and very easy



You can wait for autumn

for every leaf to fall

or you can pluck out leaves one by one

like a crow picking on mouse flesh

Pull down the tree like an elephant uprooting forests

and remove the twigs like a wolf tearing at the tendons

Split it apart like a crocodile the bones

Bore in holes like a woodpecker

Fixing staves in crosses and hammering nails is an ancient art

Make smooth the surface with putty provided by the pulp

Obtain paints from the ancestors of the trees

buried for billions of years to re-emerge through oil wells

Resins from the freshly peeled bark will provide the sheen



Now sit back on the chair set in veranda

and contemplate over the sprouting green of a grass blade

from a crack in the asphalted pavement

Patiently awaiting a forest
...