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COLDNOON: TRAVEL POETICS (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING)
(ONLINE ISSN 2278-9650 | PRINT ISSN 2278-9642)
NO. 2 | DEC ‘11 | 1.2
ED. ARUP K CHATTERJEE
COLDNOON: TRAVEL POETICS
(INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING)
COLDNOON: TRAVEL POETICS
(INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING)
ISSUE II | DEC ‘11 | 1.2
ED. ARUP K CHATTERJEE
COLDNOON: TRAVEL POETICS (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING)
Coldnoon envisions travel not as flux but instead as gaps in travelling itself. Coldnoon means a shadowed instant in time when the inertia of motion of images, thoughts and spectacles, comes to rest upon a still and cold moment. Our travels are not of trade and imagining communities; they are towards the reporting of purposeless and unselfconscious narratives the human mind experiences when left in a vacuum between terminals of travel.
First published in New Delhi India in 2011
Online ISSN 2278-9650 | Print ISSN 2278-9650
Cover Photograph, Arup K Chatterjee
Cover Design, Arup K Chatterjee
Typeset in Arno Pro & Trajan Pro
Editor, Arup K Chatterjee
Assistant Editor, Amrita Ajay
Contributing Editors: Sebastien Doubinsky, Lisa Thatcher, G.J.V. Prasad, Sudeep Sen,
K. Satchidanandan
Copyright © Coldnoon 2011. Individual Works © Authors 2011.
No part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or copied
for commercial use, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent
acquirer. All rights belong to the individual authors, and photographer.
Licensed Under:
Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Dec ‘11, 1.2) by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.coldnoon.com.
http://www.coldnoon.com/copyright/Coldnoon_TravelPoetics_Dec’11/1.2.html
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi 110067 India
www.coldnoon.com
Contents
Introduction
Editorial
Brian Wrixon
Amit Ranjan
Mohan Rana
Manash Bhattacharjee
Arup K Chatterjee
Murissa Shalapata
C. S. Bhagya
Editorial Board
1
7
11
16
22
27
32
41
48
55
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Introduction | p. 1 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Introduction
by Arup K Chatterjee
Chatterjee Arup K. “Introduction.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.2 (2011): 1-6. Web.
Licensed Under:
"Introduction" (by Arup K Chatterjee) by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under
a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.coldnoon.com.
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Introduction | p. 2 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Introduction
Perhaps Coldnoon needs to be redefined. It is true that “travel” immediately
implies to many people either travelling over a great distance on official or
leisurely matters, or a travel across years and ages. While the first one is based
on the dictionary meaning of “travel” the second one is idiomatic, and there
are a few more dictionary and idiomatic meanings of “travel” as well. Coldnoon
was born to highlight those other meanings, alongside the obvious ones. For
instance, the “walk” or the “bicycle ride” or the “newspaper” or the “letter”
needs to be re-examined. Either they are so common examples of travel that
the word “travel” excludes them today in its signification, or they are so
forgotten like the spokes of the cycle of the florist who delivers the bouquet to
your beloved that the delivery matters more than the subject which covers
instead the spokes. But, whatever the subject be, no exclusion of its meanings
are intended to be made, although Coldnoon does incline towards certain
fundamental aspects related to travel, and more importantly, the watcher of
travel, upon a cold spot, one who is presently resting between terminals of
travel. With so much, I dedicate this issue to two very old aspects of travel –
the walk and the railways.
The main reason for the expansion of and misunderstandings caused by
a word is technology which unites many usages many languages many customs
and generations. We are not always able to grasp the multifarious utility of
things that come as new or unvisited by us. So, we take on meanings that may
be different from the ones who took before or after us. In Brian Wrixon’s poem
“Remembering” technology slows down the pace of the travels of a father and
son from a running pace to a reminiscing walk. In “In Darkness, Light” Wrixon
blends two historical moments – one of Edison’s demonstration of the first
commercial incandescent light in one evening of 1879 at Menlo Park, New
York City that thousands flocked to see, and two of Neil Armstrong’s
exclamation on landing on the moon: “(O)ne small step for man, one giant
leap for mankind – and transforms it into a case of the latter existing without
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Introduction | p. 3 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
the former. The moonlit walks of new lovers, new neighbours and new friends,
all descendants of the first bulb-watchers, now in the absence of power
electricity becomes a “giant leap” again. The moon was always there, electricity
was later. Similarly travel and the railways were only to be followed by the
telephone. Ironically it is the “The Telephone Box” on an English hillside that
makes Wrixon’s poet persona construct a journey that has been recently made
and with its undertakers he can communicate only through telepathy today.
Such is the obviating nature of telecommunications that lived journeys fade
into oblivion.
Travel induces some incompleteness, that is true. Travel is never
finished, the desire is handed down again and again – it is a present
continuous, a gerundic force. Amit Ranjan’s “Standard Three” brings us back
to the root of this motion, the gerund. The secrecy of an unmoving spot which
is the parking lot, in this case, becomes an indelible moment of pause in a
child’s growth. An uncle took the child to a corner and a “little puppy kept
barking” without our knowledge of what really happened. A new gerund had
begun, for in that tender age “gerunds came free”. And these gerunds once
begun keep spinning on their own, keep driving the traveller without whose
knowing whence, whither and why. Likewise, in Ranjan’s “Villanelle of
Sardana” the traveller is advised by the “cold marble statue” at the historical
Catholic Church to “search for what he must search”. And, so, the travel takes
on a new meaning altogether; the poem as Ranjan cautions has nothing to with
the history of of Sardana or Begum Samru, or details that generally draw a
tourist to a historical spot. Shaking us out of the touristic complacency is also
Ranjan’s apocalyptic perception of the railway which all other poets in this
issue use as an image of adolescence or of the idyllic. Ranjan surprises with his
jarring staccatos on the “Parallel Lines” which I reckon as even a travesty of the
national anthem of the nation to which it belongs. Like Rabindranath Tagore’s
song Ranjan enumerates travels (and travails) throughout the length and
breadth of India experienced by its population in the train. “We owe it (all) to
the parallel lines”. One may suspect that our national anthem owes something
as well.
Mohan Rana remembers the years he has come by over his “Philips
Radio”. The radio has taken him past time and distance. He had never known
the maker of this vehicle; he did not know where it came from. But now as he
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Introduction | p. 4 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
stands in Eindhoven near the building of Philips Corporation he wonders if it
was the same radio that took him and so many like him so far. But meanings of
the radio do not still cohere. They do not cohere because what was so distant
has now become close like the “nearby sky” from Rana’s “Roads, Black &
White”, and that which was everyday and near to the traveller like the
anonymous streets and the staple of “sookhi rotis and three ‘o’ clock dal fries”
have now acquired a mythical proportion. Telecommunications have made
the world so rapid that after a day wrought with the “din” of hectic motion we
arrive at the red signal of “Journeys” to find an auto-rickshaw driver
disappointed at the red colour of his teeth seen in the chaotic rear lens mirror.
Unless it is green and back to motion the world will stay appalled. But how
much can one travel? How much can one be curious about? In “Circling and
Identity” Rana imagines that travel has been and will be about two very
fundamental curiosities – the within and the without. The traveller itself has
become the fulcrum around which one travels inward and outward; going
round about in a circle. I need, however, remind you all that Mohan Rana’s
poems have been translated from Hindi. Therefore, the elements and
interpretations of travel seen in his poems and in this introduction have
already travelled a good distance from their origin, gathering a plethora of new
meanings.
Every moment of travel is a double stroke. Manash Bhattacharjee would
try to extend it to three strokes if I allowed him. According to him a travel is
both lost in time, as well as (represented) away from its historical time. The
third stroke in the moment comes when we perceive the traces of the others
who have travelled the same road or “The Same Street”, using the title of
Bhattacharjee’s poem itself. “The Same Street”, as the poet says, was “not your
street”. It did not belong to him or her or to anyone, not even the traveller. In
the end we meet a mysterious man who in his previous birth “was either born a
toad or a peacock”, which is why he loiters about in the rainfall. Like Fahim
and Pooja had left their love-story on the stones in “At Hauz Khas Ruins” this
mysterious man (who is in fact poet Amit Ranjan; Coldnoon is delighted to
bring together these two poets) leaves his trace in a natural phenomenon, the
rainfall. So, when the stones at Hauz Khas are revisited the lovers will come
back to haunt, and when it rains on the same street this mysterious man will
return.
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Introduction | p. 5 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
My poems continue from where I had left them in the last issue, in a
series of travel poems that form part of a larger structure namely “Hundred
Miles Around Dacres Lane”. Dacres Lane is in Calcutta, and hundred miles is
mythical. So the poems are set almost everywhere in the places I have been. In
this issue, three of them feature Calcutta and the last one is about a journey
back to New Delhi from West Bengal. “On Revisiting Tollygunge Cemetery”
is a reconciliation between existing reality and the solipsistic walks of a fanciful
childhood. The child persona often both fancies and fears another community,
quite simultaneously. This combined with contemplative walks around relics
of that community produces ludicrous childhood imaginations that one
cannot easily outlive. However, it is not devoid of the growth of spiritual
difference and eventually spiritual oneness with the inanimate and sentient,
alike. “Rear Window Crimes” (a title borrowed from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear
Window) presents a usual Sunday freezing of time in a metropolis which is so
used to motion and chaos that cracks seem to appear in typical middle class
family, when travel stops, as seen by a rear window voyeur. Travel mollifies
these cracks, travel is all-subsuming, it subsumes the secret and the personal, as
does the spectacle of a rickshaw puller carrying a vestigial mode of transport in
his hands so that voyeurism gets drawn more and more to this surface veneer
and led farther from the private story. Finally, “On the Way Back to Nehru
University, New Delhi, in February” relates the unfounded or the unknown
guilt of a returning traveller who escapes from one scene of crime to another,
always at unease. Travelling and leaving things behind reminds of a primal sin
that precedes birth.
“The Streets: A Palazzo, A Bridge, A Prison” by Murissa Shalapata
manages to exorcises this guilt in no longer remaining the uneasy criminal but
initiating a unison with the criminals of the past, and the traces they have left in
a Venetian Prison, across the Bridge of Sighs near Palazzo del Doge, in Italy. In
“Visions of a San Franciscan Chinatown” Shalapata takes us to Chinatown on
her way to finding the iconic bookstore called “City Lights”, after being
inspired by Beatniks and Jack Kerouac. However, her attention shifts to a
street sign dedicated to Kerouac, his name cemented in English and Chinese,
owing to the blinding neon signs belonging to one Margarita Bar. Thus, once
again a journey takes an alter-life of its own deviating from the purpose with
which it had been started. Shalapata tells me in a personal conversation that
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Introduction | p. 6 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
the Friari Church in her poem “Reflections of Venize: Friari” is her favourite
church not only for aesthetic reasons (Shalapata is also a student in Art
History), but for the number of artists who have left their paintings as their
traces. Three strokes come full circle again and Shalapata does not
sentimentalize.
When the flock and exchangelings are away
and everything evaporates into the smell of Adriatic
at once you know
it doesn’t matter in the end (“Reflections of Venize: Friari”)
C. S Bhagya begins her “December Walk” with startling emphases on
“drifting”. The traveller has lost agency somewhat. She travels almost with the
sense of what is to come, but what is just in a deferral, like people, “some who
leave and some who leave”, like “this building and that”, like the dying year
making dead leaves out of camouflaging dogs. In the end the year is just a
“broken door” leading to another, or deferring another. “December’s white
logic” and the winter snows are themselves a deferral to their own coming.
What comes before, the “yellow plaster” of summer sunshine or the “grace” of
Jesus Christ, we will never know. In “Airports” Bhagya reveals that a journey
intended as a rendezvous with the airplane has instead become a kaleidoscope
of visions and voices at the airport. The flight will be covered in a flash now,
but what has just been encountered at the airport has left its undying imprints.
It is like seeking an unknowing helper to help her into the knowledge of space
and travel, a helper that has to be “marshaled by uniformed men”. By the time
she can come to “The City in the Hills” she finds she herself has become the
helper and the companion. People mistake her for someone from the mythical
city in the hills; people who have forgotten the city and their belongings
therein but identify her as someone who knows about their long lost roots. She
does not disappoint them; she makes fictions of this city. It is as though owing
to the curiosity of another she has gone far into knowing this city only too well.
It is time therefore that the traveller must return to fall in love with one’s own
place of being.
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Editorial | p. 7 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Editorial
Chatterjee, Arup K. “Editorial.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.2 (2011): 7-10. Web.
Licensed Under:
"Editorial" (by Arup K Chatterjee) by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.coldnoon.com.
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Editorial | p. 8 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Editorial
Dear Readers
Of Coldnoon,
Readers cannot be driven. Reading itself is a static act. But many readers will
argue that they travel new worlds through reading. This means travelling to a
new world empowers. Reading is also considered privileged. So, only the
privileged have the leisure or means to read, and reading privileges them too.
Therefore, in the mind or in the body, the subject is always at travel, and
needless to say, not without some privileging brownie points one gathers along
the way.
When we began Coldnoon we had no intention of empowering readers,
or privileging some over others. It has occurred to me, with the receipt of some
educated criticism from readers, that Coldnoon has underprivileged those who
came to read with the purpose of sight-seeing. To them I apologize.
Purposelessness has been root of Coldnoon; purposelessness in travel our sole
purpose. Writers ramble without knowing to write, readers gobble words
sometimes without referring to dictionaries, the Coldnoon; writers travel
maplessly. These are travels to which we have been thrust into, without
knowing, without caring, without living or dying because of them. Definitely a
holiday, an exploration features here and there but the moot understanding of
travel in this poetry seeps from the incoherence of the innumerable objects,
symbols and signs of travel that we leave everyday behind. We take the
pavement, we look for our bus. We find it, and we are off. Something happens
in the family, something good or bad; a friend breaks trust or delights us and
we are sedated or excited. We turn quiet or start observing. There is a sense of
our stopping, having made a time period for ourselves. It is as if we are
overtaken suddenly with all those objects, symbols and signs we had been
leaving behind so far. So now appear those numbers of the buses with a greater
vitality. Now the ticket counter of the metro starts mattering too much. And
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Editorial | p. 9 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
now we are playing those games in our heads of measuring the inertias of
motion of train compartments. Say, for instance “which bogey will stop near
me, will the door stop in front of me?” And, so on.
From the time we step out to the time we are back we have encountered
at least one thousand traces of someone travelling, someone who travelled or
someone who will travel – a phone call to a travel agency, a fine-slip for driving
without papers, a decision between the main road and subway, in fact the
courier that was mailed to our names. Imagine the distance even our names
have traversed. These all are incoherent, because our coherence is a product of
them.
Some people like travelling so much that they travel imaginarily when
they cannot act it out. Their fancy starts impersonating their bodies. This
question has been asked frequently: why does not Coldnoon; have poems
describing imaginary travels? The answer is Coldnoon; is not eventually about
travel as much as it is about the locatedness of the traveller at a termination of
the travelling act. The significance of Coldnoon; is in that cold and terminal
moment when the perspiration of the traveller cools off and discordant images
prism into a kaleidoscope. It is about the tired or the waiting traveller; it is
about the planning and the return, about expectation and reportage. Whatever
we write has already been. Even if the time is a fictitious time to come at least
the writer has seen this time. So, it is already past. Therefore we can only write
of things after we are through with them. In this regard the Coldnoon; travels
are imaginative; they are of mixed experiences from mixed travels. The
element of fiction is never ruled out, as it ought not to be. But idea of creating a
space or a comfort zone is separate from the idea of the “Coldnoon;” that
creates a space of its own around the resting traveller. This rules out the
purpose of space itself and induces a contingency of space. Our travel poetry is
about relating to this contingency with negative capability. In this way we are
not writers of imaginary travel or leisure travels.
Let me leave you all with a legend. Once a young prince asked a hermit,
“what do you mean by travelling in the mind?” The hermit answered, “I create
new worlds with divine knowledge and I walk past them in my imagination”.
The prince said, “Your mind travels but your body does not. How strange!
When my body travels my mind does not. If the mind does not travel is the
travel futile?” The hermit replied, “O young prince that is because only my
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Editorial | p. 10 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
mind has seen these worlds that I tread past every day. It is the task of my
mind, therefore, to show the way to my body. The body is fanciful and
ephemeral, it will not last. So I do not exert it”.
The young prince grew thoughtful. The princely blood in him revolted
against the spiritual jiujutsu of the hermit. He was not convinced at all. To
remain that way and not react would mean he had bowed before an
unemployed beggar. After a while he spoke, “I have seen the elephants tire.
They do not have a mind as ours. I have seen leaves fall, and thorns dispersed.
They probably have no mind at all. We travel much more than these creatures
ever will. But they travel the entire world they have known. What finds their
way for them? What mind tells them to travel? You speak as if your mind came
first, the world was next and then you travelled. The elephant goes to the same
stream every day. The thorny seeds do not cross our territory. Neither do you,
but you have already travelled the world. When my body tires the travels of
these insignificant livers come clear in my mind. How do you come to know of
them, you who claim to know the universal relation in all sentient beings? If
your body does not travel, it does not tire. If it does not tire how does your
mind remember what it saw? Answer me? The hermit was silent. The king had
been overhearing the conversation for some time now. He came forward and
greeted the hermit; both of them smiled as they were impressed by the
precocious prince’s rhetoric. The hermit offered his blessings to the prince and
the king rewarded the hermit for introducing his son to such an interesting
problem.
However, after that day, the hermit was not seen in the state anymore.
The legend has that he left the country for a world tour with the reward he had
received from the King.
Happy Coldnoon to all.
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Brian Wrixon | p. 11 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Brian Wrixon
Wrixon, Brian. “Poems by Brian Wrixon.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.2 (2011): 11-15.
Web.
Licensed Under:
"Poems by Brian Wrixon" by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.coldnoon.com.
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Brian Wrixon
Remembering
Rolling meadow down our street
Father, son run bare feet
Happily discovering
Butterflies, baby birds, wings
Seeds, bugs, nature's things
Quietly amazed
Then noise
Chainsaw, hammer, bricks, stone
A single tree left all alone
Progress?
Nature killed, meadow gone
Father and son have walked on
Only remembering
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Brian Wrixon | p. 13 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
The Pathway
In the dappled sun beneath the trees
A well-worn pathway leads me on
In a forest cooled by the breeze
A robin greets me with its song
I know not where the path will lead me
I am content to walk along its length
For one who lives both happy and free
It is the journey itself that gives him strength
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Brian Wrixon | p. 14 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
In Darkness, Light
The growing stillness of a summer's night
The music of birds singing, cicadas buzzing
Neighbours together, walking, talking
The music of people with people
Wafting over the stillness of a summer's night
Enjoying the darkness
A blaze of candles, the glow of oil lamps
Food being cooked on open flames
New friends laughing, sharing, singing
Failure of the power grid
Creating new light on a summer's night
One giant leap for mankind
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Brian Wrixon | p. 15 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
The Telephone Box
I sit on an English hillside
A village lost in time spread below
A peaceful pastoral setting
I dream and my mind wanders –
I can see the mail coach arriving
It stops at the village inn
Ladies in bonnets and men with walking sticks
Stepping down from the carriage
The anxious team ready to press onward –
I blink and am brought back to the present
As I spy the red call box on the edge of town
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Amit Ranjan | p. 16 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Amit Ranjan
Ranjan, Amit. “Poems by Amit Ranjan.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.2 (2011): 16-21.
Web.
Licensed Under:
"Poems by Amit Ranjan" by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.coldnoon.com.
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Amit Ranjan | p. 17 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Amit Ranjan
Standard Three
I was in standard three
I thought the gerunds came free
I was playing in the park
An uncle took me to the parking
My little puppy kept barking.
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Amit Ranjan | p. 18 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Parallel Lines
In father’s words they were
The lines that run to meet
And the lines that never meet.
And perhaps their value lies in that.
While Nehru made a ‘tryst’ at midnight,
Millions made a tearful, silent flight,
A flight across a line on paper.
A crooked line cooked up by crooked ambitions.
Parched, Homeless, terrorized, dead and alive,
Clustered like a million buffaloes for sacrifice,
They undertook the journey across the line
On an engine running on parallel lines.
It was spring-time,
Yet a fifty people were charred
In a burning train at Godhra,
On the same parallel lines.
“Spring is the mischief in me”,
Said a ‘moody’ Gujarat
And burnt on parallel lines.
The bare buttocks of Ghaziabad
And the metro-rail of Shahdara
Are strewn along the parallel lines.
The tunnels of the raining Western Ghats,
And the hills of the snowing Simla,
And the swirling sands of Bikaner,
Are all penetrated by the parallel lines.
The eunuchs calling you Shah Rukh Khan,
The grimy girls singing for a rupee,
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Amit Ranjan | p. 19 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
The chant of ‘Chaiya-Chaiya’ for tea
The beggars with less than four limbs;
The man getting his boot polished
And spitting on the floor-
They all travel on the parallel lines.
The vast, endless, fallow plains
The incessant, enchanting August rains,
The 44-degree boiling train,
The freezing half-naked bodies shivering in cold pain,
The rivers meandering like an endless snake,
The summits that never meet,
They are all witnessed by the parallel lines.
They burst a bomb in the desert
And had a dessert in Delhi,
And strew the sand
In a ‘Gaurav Yatra’
Along the parallel lines.
There is on the parallel lines
A name with two languages-‘Dehri-on-Sone’.
One of the lines was made weak;
And one night
The blue Rajdhani
Fell into the red sand of Sone
Off the parallel lines.
Lal Bahadur resigned on one
Nitish and Paswan could resign on none.
All the fun
Is seen by the indifferent parallel lines.
Twenty-eight states,
A hundred religions,
Ten thousand castes,
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Dec ‘11, No. 1.2 | www.coldnoon.com
Amit Ranjan | p. 20 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Three classes,
A thousand dialects,
Are woven together
By the parallel lines
If there is a nerve of this nation,
(that has not cracked as yet)
It is the ‘parallel lines’.
Oil, fish and coal
And a billion whole
Traverse a million miles
And owe it to the parallel lines.
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Amit Ranjan | p. 21 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Villanelle of Sardana
He wandered off to, and then off an old church
In search of someone's mango grove
The sweltering heat would leave him in a lurch.
On a green canopy, an exhausted eagle’s perch:
Through the air burning on a fiery stove
It looked as if it was the end of the search.
The eagle says, 'I’ll sing a dirge'
A dirge of timeless, mighty love
He says, 'sing a ballad, I urge'.
The eagle says, 'the skies and the earth merge
When over hills and rills all day I rove,
How does it matter if it's a ballad or a dirge?
Like the meandering smoke, you need to surge,
Or may be like the breath of the clove,
With the heat of the air, you'll have to merge'
He goes back to the old church
Bows his head in mighty god's love
And asks a white cold marble statue to search
Search for what he must search.
Sardana is famous for the first Catholic Church in North India made by Begum
Samru. Begum Samroo was originally Zebunissa. Walter Reinhardt ‘Sombre’ fell in
love with her when she was 14 and he 41. ‘Sombre’ was his nickname based on his
perpetual sombre mood. ‘Samru’ is a corruption of ‘Sombre’. Sombre was a
mercenary fighter and rose to own the Sardana principality near Meerut. After his
death, the Begum inherited the throne, and at a point of time her army was
virtually the savior of the Mughal dynasty in decay. Tees Hazari is so called because
30,000 Sikh soldiers had camped in Delhi to overthrow Shah Alam. The Begum’s
army drove them away. The poem has nothing to do with all this.
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Mohan Rana | p. 22 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Mohan Rana
Rana, Mohan. “Poems by Mohan Rana.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.2 (2011): 22-26.
Web.
Licensed Under:
"Poems by Mohan Rana" by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.coldnoon.com.
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Mohan Rana | p. 23 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Mohan Rana
Philips Radio
My home grew wizened on its Vivid Bharati
Its highs and lows, the fluctuating waves
Its knob has forsaken us in our last whitewash
Cells heated in the sun turn silent by nightfall
In between the headlines
Cowering from the rough wind in the open streets, at the heart of Eindhoven
I stand near a large building of Philips Corporation
I walk the zebra-crossing ponderingly
Is it our Philips Radio
Translated From the Hindi Poem “Philips ka Radio”
From Is Chhor Par, 2003
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Mohan Rana | p. 24 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Roads, Black & White
Traversing cities, addresses and nameless corners
Turning to the left and turning right
For miles into the horizon plunging
Spiralling often or sloping down
Endless forever these twin-born roads
The long-bound nocturnal buses,
Dhabas, sookhi rotis and three ‘o’ clock dal fries
Farms left behind somewhere in darkness
The cool scent of Vanaspati
And somewhere a dozing scarecrow
Beneath the constellations of a nearby sky
Translated From the Hindi Poem “Safed Sadak, Kali Sadak”
From Subah Ki Dak, 2002
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Mohan Rana | p. 25 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Journey
Smoke crosses the bridge
A river ambles in melancholia
A coal-laden truck passes the check-post
Power-plant chimneys breathe colour into the Autumn sky
The evening’s newspaper is wrapped in a din
In a din an elephant goes to its bath
Journeys get arrested in this din
By the din in his rear-lens the rickshaw driver observes
His teeth that are red
At a red-signal
When will it be green, I wonder
Translated From The Hindi Poem “Yatayat”
From Subah Ki Dak, 2002
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Mohan Rana | p. 26 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Circling An Identity
Let us see who lives in this house
The hope of some surprise
Stands patiently with folded arms
Knocking on the door I wonder
How ancient this door must be
I listen to the breeze disentangling from shrubs,
The resonating traffic seeping through their pores
I listen to my breath, my rising pulse
And wiping my shoes on the doormat
I plant my ear on the door
It felt someone was approaching from within
Closing my eyes, expecting
A hand inside to motion, reach out for the bolt
As if the eternal sigh spread over the momentous spot
Both on inside
And without
As if I myself, the door perhaps
Ever estranging
And becoming
an Identity
Translated From the Hindi Poem “Ajnabi Banta Pehchaan”
From Patthar Ho Jayegi Nadi, 2007
All Poems of Mohan Rana in This Issue Have Been
Translated By Arup K. Chatterjee
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Manash Bhattacharjee | p. 27 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Manash Bhattacharjee
Bhattacharjee, Manash. “Poems by Manash Bhattacharjee.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics
1.2 (2011): 27-31. Web.
Licensed Under:
"Poems by Manash Bhattacharjee" by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.coldnoon.com.
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Manash Bhattacharjee | p. 28 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Manash Bhattacharjee
At Hauz Khas Ruins
To Anindita & Richa
Mad pigeons play
Hide and seek
Over silence of stone
Voices call out each
Other with names to dispel
The fear of stone
Lovers hold hands
And bury time
Over secrets of stone
We found a claim etched
Against the roofless cubicle
Of stone:
"Fahim loves Pooja"
We wondered about
Love
In a different century
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Manash Bhattacharjee | p. 29 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
The Same Street
I took you to the same street
Which was not your street
But a street where I walked
Alone or with a friend
For days and years and for days
Which were years
And there was no love and I wondered
Along the street and the trees
Where is this love along the street
Like the sudden face of a stranger
Or the face of someone I know
But they all passed me by
As if I was just one face among many
Along this street.
And I wondered whether I am meant
To catch someone’s gaze
Or just be a passing shadow
Until you arrived with your ears in your eyes
And your heart in your hands
I told you stories of this street
When you were absent
When I didn’t lose company with
Myself so that you will find me.
We walked this street where it was
About to rain
And where the sky had disappeared.
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Manash Bhattacharjee | p. 30 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
But we scarcely noticed
As we were caught up between
Our own eyes
Until it rained and we looked for shelter.
We neither ran nor walked
But our steps were in a hurry to find a place
Where we would find no place
Except our own heads now watered down
To our feet and how I always loved your feet
Of flowing water
And I couldn’t say whether the street was flowing
Or your feet from the rain.
I recognized you
Once again from all the water that was flowing
As you were the water flowing
Since days over years and a day from a single
Life of days of rain and lonely street
And the rain brought everything together.
In the same street one night we met a man who
Told us that in his earlier life
He was either born a toad or a peacock
And that if we don’t find him
Anywhere else we should look for him here in the rain.
First published in New Writings from India, Vol. V, Penguin
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Manash Bhattacharjee | p. 31 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
The First Train
The first train is also the
Last train which runs
In memory.
I remember it was dawn
And cold and very wet.
I bid goodbye to the
Neighbourhood roads as father
Urged the rickshaw puller
To ride us faster.
Father spoke of time
More than he spoke of the train.
As if we had to catch time
Along with the train.
The station was a page
From a story book.
People were stationed like heavy
Luggage waiting to be lifted.
But father was too anxious to wait.
He kept looking at his
Watch restlessly as if urging the
Train to reach us faster.
But soon we heard the train
Would come a bit late.
Father looked angrily at
His watch as he cursed the train.
He behaved the same way
Every time I was late for school.
I felt trains were naughty
Children who never arrive on time.
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Arup K Chatterjee | p. 32 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Arup K Chatterjee
Chatterjee, Arup K. “Poems by Arup K Chatterjee.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.2
(2011): 32-40. Web.
Licensed Under:
"From, Hundred Miles Around Dacres Lane" (by Arup K Chatterjee) by Coldnoon:
Travel Poetics is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.coldnoon.com.
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Arup K Chatterjee | p. 33 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
from, Hundred Miles Around Dacres Lane
by Arup K Chatterjee
On Revisiting Tollygunge Cemetery
Long ago a Mohammedan fantasy
Used to creep as we walked the graveside road –
The graves of Muslim elders as I knew,
As if the younger ones could never die –
And I dreamed willingly the dreadful dreams
Their long and grey beards of Kashmiri wool
It must be them who sing the haunting azaan
Those old spirits that have never been free
Ma taught me ghosts and God were one
She indulged me but left me dream
Even when dreams had just begun
All ghosts and God would Muslim seem
The hospital that stood quite adjacent
Has been dilapidating even now
"Here is where they die" as I used to think
No one has killed me nor I killed any
For having such hideous adolescence
Today I walk again the graveside road
And I am not worth killing anymore
Neither the Muslim elders talk to me
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Arup K Chatterjee | p. 34 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Ma took me to eat biriyani
At the dargah some Saturdays
In Prince Anwer Shah's Colony --
Still it stunts my sight in a haze
Tollygunge cemetery still lies here
I do not know when I relinquished it
It must have been around my eighteenth year
When I totally stopped questioning God
When I totally stopped to walk by him
Biriyani at dargah was always stale
But Ma went to relish some spectacle
Was it the dusting off of sins with a broom?
I would never know what it was
Ma by now has forgotten too
The road goes on, the memory follows
The walker one, the lives were two
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Arup K Chatterjee | p. 35 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Rear Window Crimes
I have been watching domestic assault
Everything is too verbal to report
There is no mustard oil or ginger-garlic
So, a mathematics tutor is replaced
Since morning it has been so clamorous
This Sunday-husband and Sunday-father
Reads The Sunday Statesman and a report card
And both of them featuring old details
Today again is holiday
Today no gravity, speed or mass
Let us not talk of Faraday
"In the next term I will surely pass"
Today is Victoria Morning Sunday
Today is Kalighat Cricket Coaching
The daughter will quietly hide in the terrace
With forbidden pages of Sananda
The telephone knows Baba is at home
But telephone bills can come anytime
The morning will clamour in markets and homes
Till a Sunday afternoon rattling of trams
Let us go to New Market please
Let us eat at Park Street today
No barrels of sand on donkeys
Of all they do are doze and bray
Today is the Charlie Chaplin hour
Today is the Surabhi 7 'o' clock
Today is the slumber of fish and rice
Today is the forsaken taxi stand
Today if it rains few footsteps will mar
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Arup K Chatterjee | p. 36 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Marred potholes of Shyambazar chowrasta
If winter, we will look for mustard oil
To oil our body in the secret terrace
So the tutor will be replaced
In the absence of mustard oil
All is halting, all time erased
Just Sunday tramlines rattle in foil
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Arup K Chatterjee | p. 37 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Two Letters and an Octave
Baba,
There is a photograph I want to show you. I feel very moved when I see it. I
imagine you as the man in it. And I feel guilty, overjoyed, and always very
moist with many unknown feelings. The photograph is of a rickshaw puller. I
took it last month, here at Bhowanipore, as I was crossing the street in
Jadubabu Bazar. Ever since it has been printed I felt guilty of the slyness with
which I captured this tired labourer. Maybe a portrait of you during your work
hours would make me feel the same things. There are so many things about
him I do not know. I think it is best that way. I am sending you the
photograph, Baba.
Lovingly,
Sheshank
________
Ammi,
Selim is writing this for me. He can write very good Bangla now and also some
English. Last night he beat me very much after coming home drunk. I tried to
oil the calluses on his feet. He even threw the plate away. There was only
starch rice to eat. He brought some money and glass bangles. I wore them. He
did not even look at me. Some broke when he crushed my wrist. I worry about
tonight. I want to cook something for him. Selim is going to school. He will
drop the letter on the way. Ammi, he smiled at me before he picked up the
rickshaw handle. I just hope it doesn't rain today. Roads become harsher for
his feet.
Ayesha.
________
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Arup K Chatterjee | p. 38 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
She swept away the last of broken bangles
He packed some puffed rice and white onions
And tied to the handle of the rickshaw
Before he pulled the handle to his waist
He looked at her and whispered very softly
Do you know how beautiful I think you are?
She stared at his calluses, he trotted past
A photographer trailing, under grey skies
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Arup K Chatterjee | p. 39 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
On the Way Back To Nehru University, New Delhi, in February
From interior Bengal to New Delhi
A lavish wedding to a railway platform
The ceremony is larger hereabouts
The food stalls outnumber cousin's marriage
The red robes outnumber our wedding aunts
As I bend to count the platform footfalls
They crisscross like million camera lenses
Instead of Brahmins here beggars are fed
We call them porters, rather they are
Old settlers transporting follies
That travellers bring from near and far
In cartons, portable strolleys
Why do I compare this to a marriage?
I am, by far here, the most unwelcome
And I wish them away as they wish me
And we all tussle for the platform gate
And we all will tussle out of this womb
Until the stillborns and unborns are left
For in every face we can see our sins
We have left at the last boarding station
Cities will marry cities here
Children will come, children go back
Coolies will doctor our births clear
Our secrecy will cost in black
Is it the childhood wind calling again
With the evening lullabies of springtime?
I will carry my luggage on my own
It is difficult to be borne again
And harder still to be coming back
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Arup K Chatterjee | p. 40 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
To air and sunshine, ageing one more year
To remember weddings from every spring
To be stranded on stairs as worlds surpass
Here to auto stand, hundred miles,
A railway engine whistles by
I travel, haggle, purloin smiles
The suitcase has no alibi
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Murissa Shalapata | p. 41 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Murissa Shalapata
Shalapata, Murissa. “Poems by Murissa Shalapata.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.2
(2011): 41-47. Web.
Licensed Under:
"Poems by Murissa Shalapata" by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.coldnoon.com.
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Murissa Shalapata | p. 42 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Murissa Shalapata
The Streets
A Palazzo, A Bridge, A Prison
Dirty metal shackles carved
deep within the rough stone
I walk the same halls, streets and repent
my head as heavy as your every day wrists
holding on to the idea of the outside
with nothing but memory of bloody Christ drawings
So with a sigh you make your own drawings
and everything is determinedly carved
as if time remembers like stone
maybe it is too late to repent
with the preparation of the slashing of your wrists
the inside becomes your outside
when I saw your outside
and the patient drawings
of the carved
and riddled stone
it made me want to repent
as I massaged my wrists
The ache of my wrists
when I placed them outside
the cobbled drawings
in the impeccably carved
boxy churches within the stone
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Murissa Shalapata | p. 43 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
of your cell where I try to think of the urgency to repent
To reach between these gates to repent
whittle, like keys, the bones of my wrists
to where I can see your bone or my bone on the outside
my smaller finger bones run along your drawings
like a meditation and they are once again carved
and remembered like an ink stone
My fingers scratch the imprint you left in chalk stone
my forehead, shoulders and chest itch, sigh, to repent
but what it felt like to not possess the key to my wrists,
and to walk names of the streets outside,
elude me like children's drawings
not like yours with dates, 1899, all carve
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Murissa Shalapata | p. 44 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Visions Of a San Franciscan Chinatown
With stretched out leather Italian sandals in grey I landed
on top of Jack Kerouac's name in gold
a Hollywood replica in literary memorial
a square in cement
What better way than with a street sign too?
000-->
Jack Kerouac A narrow alley with a neon sign at the end warning
(Adler) Margaritas
(blocking City Lights)
No littering
No right turns
I shot the scene with a Chinese man who wouldn't budge
-that subject challenging author trope-
he leaned against the post, hands in his jeans
black sunglasses, a cream chapeau and a suitcase by polished shoes
It was clear, through the black shade of glass,
that he was looking at me
looking more Western like an Eastwood
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Murissa Shalapata | p. 45 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Reflections Of Venize
Friari
With crimson Bardolino in hand
I taste you, Venize
your mind numbing routes of destiny
like untangling knots of angel hairs
in a hurry by the hour glass of spices
that smell of sulfur, basilico, lemon and grass
I paid little attention to your streets
of uneven marble and stone
besides when I tripped and was face to face
with my own salty self
Ponte Rialto
sick of the view
sick of the weighty feet that wears her down
each
year
closer to her teal bowels
I round and there, stone-faced
built-in virgin on the street corner
and me - a tourist, an atheist -
in the thrill of abandonment
discovering someone new
in me
In time
Adriatic sun feeds
sweat stems down my back
growing from my blue floral neck
soaking into black cotton
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Murissa Shalapata | p. 46 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
At the doors of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari
smells like an antique old wood shop in rain
kicked a crippled Italiano
hunched
with a ringing clinging chalice
in need of spare jewels
from any contemporary Franciscan
who's willing to be buried beneath the stone
in the floor of the church
knowing it doesn’t matter in the end
I pass him
despite his purple tumors
despite his fortune
that any icy creature of Cain
would trade for my
lecture of pictures
and stone
and men that don't matter any more
Nor do I care
when in the presence of Canova
his tomb of sleep
his pyramid of death
A sleeping winged lion
mourners that you drew (for the death of another)
stays guard of our dreams
Does the patron let you roam Venize at night?
When the flock and exchangelings are away
and everything evaporates into the smell of Adriatic
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Murissa Shalapata | p. 47 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
at once you know
it doesn’t matter in the end
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C. S. Bhagya | p. 48 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
C. S. Bhagya
Bhagya, C. S. “Poems by C. S. Bhagya.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.2 (2011): 48-54.
Web.
Licensed Under:
"Poems by C.S. Bhagya" by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.coldnoon.com.
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C. S. Bhagya | p. 49 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
C.S. Bhagya
December Walk
I drift
through an ill, ginger-tea winter
through a city stammering in cold
syllables. I drift
through a road taut with absences:
people have retreated
to parts of the city they believe
less desolate, and people
who cross despite are split
in two directions: some who leave
and some who leave.
Between this building and that
the body lifts in grains, in mist-breath
dense steps, the body moves.
And on all days that one tree cranes out,
barren year-round,
head protruding bird like fruit
in sharp cries, the aftermath of labour.
Now I drift
in a subtracting weather.
Here dogs practise camouflage,
bundling back into limbs
in a mess of dead leaf, light
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C. S. Bhagya | p. 50 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
wood-debris.
Here trees give birth to crows.
And here all our close shaves with death
become life: sunlight
appearing on grave mornings
like a hymn –
deferral to December’s white logic –
to present grace, heal in yellow plaster
a year’s broken door.
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C. S. Bhagya | p. 51 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Airports
In a far corner I glimpse bleach and red
aeroplane-fins stab air, parked on giant
runways like great fish, some metal whale.
They leave a sense of unease in me,
airports, with those cool persistent voices
on speakers insisting we report suspicious
behaviour, objects; think, right about now
miscreants in disguise abandoning bombs,
and in a second all these lovely, anonymous
smooth floors, gaunt ceilings, dishevelled
people, babies in trolleys may vanish
in one inverted vortex of speed and sound
and light. But then you, who I came to see
through these doors, marshalled by uniformed
men, ushered to customs, immigration and
an alien tongue; you, who I trust to the skies
with others waiting for distance like flocks
of birds, look back and wave through thick
glass walls, evening a white glaze in your eye.
And your lips form frantic, familiar words
soundlessly.
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C. S. Bhagya | p. 52 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
The City in The Hills
Nose ring aglint, this man
arrows through a Mobius strip alleyway
in the lowest spill of my city
filled with so many people its walls are breaking.
In its animal heat, somebody once said,
was a lake and in that lake
what lies forgotten everywhere.
I forget, I say – it’s a little joke of mine –
when he hankers for truths
nobody cares about anymore in this new land
birthed between stray dog dragons,
cars spitting fire.
Somebody has been feeding him
the wrong stories for the right money.
It doesn’t matter now if I say
I don’t trade in what you are looking for,
his sunken stare will crave the gravel
of what’s left of the city in the hills
he thinks I take great pleasure in hiding
from his people
running through taverns clutching handbags
someone fooled them was leather,
books he travelled two thousand miles to read
when reading would have led him the same distance
away.
This man wants the hills from me
and will not rest until he has them.
So I tell him the lies I always tell.
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C. S. Bhagya | p. 53 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
(Once in a city in the hills there was a boy
who forgot his name,
and what he brought back from the city
was a stack of government papers
holding his navy blue fingerprint,
a passport photo which no longer
bears any resemblance to him.)
I tell him enough to keep me from trouble:
blundering history departments flourish under
blind patrons, hoarding
what they claim are the real stories:
unblemished, deathly pale.
I tell him just enough to carry him
on the rest of his journey
mulling over the wilderness
he will later think he came from –
a town he will lose sight of in time.
I don’t tell him I have an idea of this city
in the hills as one imagines
the shape of a song one never listened to before.
Sixty years is a long time
to remember a city somebody told you
you were born in, long enough to confuse
what it held in its shaky old heart
with every city you wanted to visit,
with incongruous minarets,
canals, crude statues of tribesmen
whose chipped shoulders no longer ache
of childhood.
I don’t tell him I have an idea of this
city in the hills, only an idea.
I’m making up its streets as I walk along.
So I tell him this city lived in a lake once,
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C. S. Bhagya | p. 54 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
like the city we’re walking in
but the lake has forgotten the city
and its people their lake,
but they come back
insisting they want to listen to its stories
telling me, you must be from the city
in the hills, you look like you must be from
the city in the hills, you have that look,
look I’ve come so far to hear of the city the in hills
so I may fall in love with my own
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p. 55 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Editorial Board
EDITOR
Arup K Chatterjee
Poet, Critic and Researcher
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi, India
ASSISTANT EDITOR
Amrita Ajay
Researcher, and Teacher of English
University of Delhi, India
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
K Satchidanandan
Poet, and Former Professor of English,
University of Calicut
Former Editor of Indian Literature,
The journal of Sahitya Akademi
New Delhi, India
Lisa Thatcher
Writer
Sydney, Australia
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p. 56 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Sudeep Sen
Poet, and Editor of Atlas Magazine
Editorial Director of Aark Arts Publishers
New Delhi, India, London UK
GJV Prasad
Poet, Novelist, and Critic
Professor of English, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Vice Chair, Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language
Studies
Editor of Journal of the School of Languages
New Delhi, India
Sebastien Doubinsky
Poet, Novelist, and Critic
Researcher, and Lecturer, Aesthetics and Communication
Aarhus University, Denmark
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