Sitanshu Yashaschandra Poems

I said:
Yes.

Birds broke out of eggshells, orange sun of an early morning blossomed
atop a kevada shrub, black dark earth of tree roots rose up to turned into green leaves
of shiny branches and from between heavy shoulders held against a beheading block
a thick red fluid began to flow slowly.

How I had hesitated before uttering that word.

I knew well its fearsome beauty.

Have you ever had a boil on your body, reaching deep through flesh to the marrow of
bone, beginning there and not coming up to the skin, slowly surfacing, a tiny yellow-
white spot, throbbing, pulsating, glowing like your own private sun of pain, dazzling your
eyes with a blinding radiance, no sun glasses with you, no sleep, for long, and then,
finally, yes, finally, it bursts;
That bursting is Yes.

There is no halfway yes.
The yes of the yes-and-no is something else altogether.
I am talking of the lone Yes.
Eggshells broke open and yellow pus had fluttered out. I had said;
Yes.

They all stepped back
All hands were withdrawn: Hands which friends had stretched out,
Hands which foes had raised.

It costs to say Yes
in this land of yes-and-no.

I have been a traveller through distant lands of learning,
I ought to be writing accounts of my journeys across the continents of cultures.
But something went wrong.
I came across the usual sign board at the outskirts of a town:
"Hope you had a pleasant stay. Come back again to the town of Nadiad."
I went on to the other side of the signboard to see the Welcome sign from the town
Of Paris, the city limits of which extend up to somewhere there.
I looked and found the reverse side of the signboard blank

I have said yes to that emptiness.

Wouldn't it have been better to say many tiny little yeses all across?
Utter them and the folk run upto you: "Farishta-Farishta!" "Saviour Come!" and
They believe that all will be well. The good folk.

"Why don't you describe the beauty of nature in your poems?": A rich farmer
Of the yes-and-no land once asked me.
Listen then:
I have said yes to the river that laughs out excited by the plunging of a hippopotamus into
its rushing waters. And to the warm summer which has set in on the hills north of the
river, melting tons of snow on their peaks.
No one could now stop the floods which would soon come and devastate dirty taluk
towns clustered on her banks.

Have you ever seen a farm house catch fire, men running away, cattle tied to their posts
pulling at the chain, flames creeping closer, and the heat, and the light, brighter, brighter
still, and the eyes shut tight.
Then, before our tight shut eyes appears the mother who bears us all. She says: say Yes,
obstinate idiot, say Yes.

I have said Yes to that.

In the quiet that followed
Who, then, came out of the eggshell?
The new-born of moon-mad chakor bird and the new born of sun-drenched hawk

When you say the lone Yes to both the night-lotus and the lotus of mid-day,
Then which Time should your own sky display on its vast dial?

Yes is the last word that the speaker speaks. After that, his silence.
...

The forest is afire and slow is the flow of my song.
Birds living atop tall ebony trees of speech are beyond help now.

This ancient rain forest, parrot-green, full and broad.
Many monsoons have failed; there still is water under its floor;
Muddy and bitter.

These heavy thick woods wouldn't burn down that quick; flames
Would erupt, form canopies of sparks, stop, only to start again.
This fire wouldn't lie down, eyes shut, in any cool bed of smooth ashes.

There is water here, enough for the forest not to dry up.
Not enough to put out the fire.

With a slow cadence, this song too has lost its sense,
Cannot claim its suggestions.
Moans of beasts, men, birds and trees sound alike

A flock of parrots, a big flock with hundreds of parrots, is now flung in the sky.
Hovers, scatters, twists back to itself, and falls like gray stones
Hurled at the forest

If only I could remember the prosody preserved on the pages
Of the lost book of metres,
I could write the epic of tall trees of teak and ebony numbed by the blows of the
stones.

The thick broad pennant on the temple of the Forest-Shiva
Burns and flutters.
Where are the prosodic rules for the figures
Of speech I hear so well in the bubbling of water boiling
In the pitcher over the Shivalinga?

In the innermost temple, mere brilliance.

I am inside the white cool cliffs of marble,
I am inside multifaceted crystals,
Behind the stiff rocks of huge cut diamonds.


I see, all around, this forest lit up by the flames,
I am untouched by the fire.
I am singed.
I burn.
...

On the roof, it has red, sun-baked tiles.
The doors are light wood, with large copper rings,
A young custard-apple tree in its old courtyard.
Yes, I have a home of my own.

I don't quite know where.
Be it where it is.

But, verily, it is not a fortress.
It does not have deep trenches all around and flooded and full
Of crocodiles.
It has no drawbridges with ropes and pulleys and wide flooded trenches with crocodiles.

O the one who has just pulled the ropes and lifted
The bridge like a cannon
Between my two thick thighs
Is a stranger Musalmaan and I
Am his old fortress.

The one which is my home, though,
Has a nice smooth pathway of red earth sprinkled with pure water.
The lane leads to other lanes and streets and roads and on those roads
There are many cottages and houses and halls
And we are good neighbours all and exchange
Cooked rice and sweets on copper plates.
If you lower the draw bridge, now,
the Rajputs, Marathas and Firangees are likely to attack;

If you do not lower the draw bridge, however,
The granaries in the fort are likely to be exhausted and our Sipahies
Might lose their virile strength to attack.

I have a home of my own, though,
And it has an earthen stove.
She, with those soft-red cheeks, seems to have cooked this evening
The thin soup with cardamom, cinnamon, cloves.
I come back home via the main market place, buying for her
Some soft sweets she cares for, and as I enter our soft clay lane,
My breath becomes the same fragrance as her clove and cardamom soup.

Our spies have brought back the news that the kafirs would attack this Friday night

The postman brings some letters, leaves them near the doors.
I read them aloud.
The young ones of the family are coming home tomorrow evening, it says.
She hears that and there is a dimpled smile on her cheeks.

I notice that the tree has some large fruits now on its upper branches.
If they are ripe, children would love to eat them, I say aloud.
I go to the front yard and reach out to a large fruit with deep green scales.
Is it ripe yet, I press it and the grenade bursts in my palm.

My eyes are singed with its fire but I hear a copper ring bounce on stone floor of the fort.

Then I try and yes perhaps I see it there,
Not too far from here, somewhere,
Home, may be,
Red and baked tiles on its roof
And, yes, see
The door with the copper ring.
...

A flash of boats sprouts across ocean fields.

Sailors might take root
But what of the seahorses?

Hoofless seahorses graze on green pearls.

Riding atop sea horses, the divers jump
high walls of confinement.
If a seahorse could only find a foothold
on the full, hot back of the subaquatic mare of fire
flares would jump around like newborn colts!

But, before the drowning sailors' desperate eyes,
brief seahorses inch along, mingled with many fish.

It is the whale-jaw, which is full of flames and god.

Later, much later, seahorses would come to beg for graced food from dead sailors.

A final question, though:
What of the hoofless seahorses
On these stony ocean fields?
...