‘Babel of Broken Pencil Points’ : 3 Poems after Artworks by Shilpa Gupta

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Between the scratching pencil and the interface,      a red palm blooms
into a fist of petals     i bite its green stem         and the white sap turns
paisley with want    i hold it close          this fiery missive from the tombs
these fingers long as grasshoppers’ legs                    Even silence learns

to wait outside the door     when the poet begins to write space as time
Pass the salt, dear fellow.         Why the hurry? Sit with me by the shore
of the idea.   Prick that ear whose cartilage is paper    Scale the rhyme
to the edge of the cliff.              Bend low, now,  like in the days of yore

when a commoner’s theft       of famine-bread             infected the king’s own body,
Bend low, so that the weight of the land could rest,                for a meagre moment,
on your slouched shoulders.     Pave the bridge of your back, poet, with the shoddy
clay of dissatisfaction. Sit at the chai katta, Ruminate, Smoke your Charminar blunt.

When they ask about those you loved, those who moved you, and your usual haunts
Giggle uncontrollably, and then show them            your Babel of broken pencil points

“Smuggled Everyday Garment”

little children sit at one-arms-distance fearful lest the homeostasis
of the home is disturbed. she could come in any moment now and unfurl

the ball of her discontent       days of bobpins       and cooker-seethi anticipation
she stitched into a globe   her atlas of little misgivings    she kneaded and curled

what grimaces and scratches     embroidered their cotton-skins            into armour
how they shifted the cold steel of her absence   this pole around which they twirled

we teach silence to each other   like a pair of prisoners     we grow old together
our nails clipping dreams    the way the devil-mushroom    grows in the underworld

sabka badla lega tera faizu     every word that I write     was born in that silence
baap ka dada ka sabka   every inter-generative sentence from that void once hurled

I write  to protect myself from the destiny  of somebody   remembering what I write
this ball smuggled from the factory-floor of my days             I fashion into a world

Don’t mistake the impulse   There is nothing saccharine about poetry   no word
is innocent    A river turns against the grasslight    with fire its ripples are finely pearled

“100 Handdrawn Maps of India”

“यदि तुम्हारे घर के एक कमरे में आग लगी हो
तो क्या तुम दूसरे कमरे में सो सकते हो?”

(“देश कागज पर बना नक्शा नहीं होता”, सर्वेश्वर दयाल सक्सेना)

If one room of your house is on fire,
can you sleep in another room?
(“A country is not a map drawn on paper”, Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena)

The moon is a stone
   lodged in the throat of our history.
When the air gets thick with news,
   people start to cough.
Smog burns the eyes, dry-feet
   begin to itch. And the dust
of yesteryear stars like pathfinder beams,
   veinates the territory.
How astonishing that the star
   is a death by fire, how prophetic
that the past lights up our tomorrows.  
   Like lines threading the palm
of a weak man spurned, the future turns
   in on itself. I have redrawn
your eyes as paisley flames
   in the dark crevice of this land’s turning;
Two slits in a dark night with no end;
   Your fingers find the bars
of my rib-cage, and clingwrap
   the skin tight around the protrusion;
Nothing in the way your lips curl
   tells me what you are about to do.
So I let it be. The most beautiful thing
   about the nights in this city,
is that they resolve themselves
  into morning. The world resets
at the croak of dawn, and
   the work of the day begins.
I give you, my love, this photograph.
   I have drawn over the blurred sepia
to be faithful to my memory of us.
   To walk back with respect to a place
I once called home. When you looked at me
   then, I became refugee,
and all the borders of the world
   screamed in unison, all the metal-detectors
froze in their tracks. No map can hold
   the country of your gaze, when smitten
with mischief, you enslave me in your arms.
   Where nobody, not even the state can see us.
Let us lie low, now. Everytime we make love,
   another bloodred elsewhere blooms –
a siren rings, an ambulance cries,
   a life is nipped at the bud.