Shanta Acharya

I wander among the dead in a cemetery town,
exploring winding paths where angels carved in stone
direct me through green alleyways.

This island with overhanging yew and trailing clematis,
unifying ivy nurturing insects, larvae, butterflies and birds
has more to do with the living than the departed.
We need solace of the Comfort Corner more than the dead.

Through the hawthorn and blackthorn, field maple and elm,
a cool wind blows steadily through our realm.

The voices of children from the playground
confirm the inscription on Karl Marx's tomb:

The philosophers have only interpreted the world
in various ways. The point however is to change it.

Every day our little world changes a little bit,
whether we like it or not is quite irrelevant.
I imagine a dialogue between Marx and Krishna.
It is easier I confess to alter myself than the world.

When our friends start to leave it is time
to take stock of our coming and going:

Of those immortal dead who live again
in minds made better by their presence.

In unmapped terrain within us we bury
in terraced catacombs painful memories.
If only we could let them grow out of us like trees.
...

Helmeted musclemen gliding on steel escalators
in the City bomb-proof buildings against terrorists.

Space-walking on huge walls of glass,
they examine me as they would any other lass.

Smiling, they take a random walk unafraid of vertigo
like the stock market index raring to go.

Who said men seldom make passes at women with glasses?
Real men do, particularly at women in city offices.

Cubicles, now shatterproof, hold fragile egos.
Men in dark grey suits shuffle in corporate shoes.

Pin-stripe suits come and go, talking of P/E ratio,
top-down, bottom-up methods of the intelligent investor.

As I mend the rules of the old boys' network
and demand my share of the profits of my work,

I hit the invisible glass ceiling each time
I stand up for myself as if that was a crime.

A single, Indian female, I am trapped,
alas, in a cage of bomb-proof, shatter-proof glass.

The Jurassic laws in the City continue to spawn
dinosaurs that even Spielberg cannot improve upon.

Next time these helmeted musclemen blow me a kiss,
I will signal to them to rescue a woman in distress.
...

As a child you instinctively know
there are things you don't know,
you also know you know of things
the adults think you don't know.

Growing up is a process of knowing,
of knowing you don't know,
acknowledging that others might know,
though they don't know that you don't know.

Wisdom comes when you can forget what you know,
when you know your parents, friends, lovers, well-wishers,
even your enemies, your best teachers, don't know,
for what is worth knowing is what you don't know.

Some people are born plain lucky,
they sail through life without knowing
they don't know, and not knowing
they don't know what is worth knowing
protects them from a lifetime of unknowing.

For most of us there is a price to be paid,
most of us get damaged, more or less, in the process
and end up knowing what is not worth knowing.
...

(After Anish Kapoor's ‘creations' at the Hayward Gallery, London, 1998)


The queue outside stretches
like an alley cat, waiting
to enter the crowded gallery,
explore the plugged-holes at the centre
of walls and ceilings. Not enough time
or space for all to experience ways of defining
It-of lending shape, colour, sound, meaning.

Once inside, the world is turned upside down,
inside out, disoriented with double mirrors,
emptied of space funnelling into arupa,
untitled, leaving us newly-born, fearful of oblivion.

In the beginning (or is it the end?)
securing a discrete position
I get sucked into my mother's womb
peering at deep dark shrines of
my body, her body; our bodies
moving in rhythm to creations
at the vortex, doubly-inverted images,
when I become pregnant, making the world many.

We exchange according to our measure
the open-endedness of things, configuring
a nose, a breast, a man posing in his briefs?
Or something new waiting to be seen.

Imagination turns earth and stone into sky.
In the dark, polished hollow of a marble mummy
a fleeting spirit appears. A twisting column of light,
I flicker before giving up the ghost.
...

It took centuries
the journey from cipher,
invisible wedge, thing of no importance to zero, point of reckoning -
piece of the unknown fathomed,
being counted, standing solidly
three dimensional, banishing mystery altering lives forever,
establishing one's significance
in space, time, trade, science,
lending the world order,
measuring phenomena,
not just the freezing point of water, creating certainty,
holding things together.



Shunya, vessel taking the shape
of whatever is poured into it,
godlike, containing everything and nothing - pregnant with possibility,
poised between positive, negative,
life and death,
vanishing point, knowing infinity,
drawing down divinity,
reflecting sum of the universe,
reducing all to Itself, always transforming...
...