Poems from Usha’s Second Collection:-
Night Sky Between The Stars
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Carrying a Culture
Through journeys
across continents
that breathe in time,
I carry it, like
an expectant mother,
inhaling and exhaling
into available spaces;
like a stubborn child
with a battered old toy,
refusing to let go;
like the scent of clove,
cinnamon and cardamom,
that women back home
sauté with their vegetables;
like the lone temple bell
that awakens light;
like an oft repeated prayer,
waiting for an answer.
Girl Trees
{To the women of Piplantari}
Today they are planting trees here, to celebrate
the birth of a baby girl, invoking mother-goddesses
lost in time. Their spirited talk about a greener future
revives the still air; their veiled giggles, promises to
the tired earth mourning for green trees that once stood
and breathed. Elsewhere, they drown baby girls
in milk, sell them in bazaars, pluck them out
of their mothers’ wombs, like fragile dreams.
I touch the earth, her drying skin watered by tears.
I hear the whimpering of foetuses inside her throbbing
womb, overflowing with new seed yearning to be born.
I hear stories pulsing in her lapis-blue veins.
I hear leafy whispers, rustlings, auguries of the birth
of a dark woman, saviour of the world. I hear cries
of unborn girls, with wombs as large as the universe.
Meanwhile, in the festive hamlet, rainbow saris flower
amidst the myriad saplings they carry for the little girl,
a miniature mother goddess chuckling in her cradle.
Today, the village common is a pulsating forest
of women, laughing, singing, dancing. Mother Earth
reborn, every girl becomes a tree, every tree a girl.
{In Piplantari, Rajasthan, local women plant 111 trees in the village common, each time a baby girl is born.}
Five Virgins
Ahalyā, Draupadī, Tārā, Kuntī, Mandodarī tathā
Panchakanyā smarēnityam mahāpātakanāśanam
Once I believed like all wide-eyed young girls
that the five virgins, who metamorphosed into stars
would deliver me from sin; a pantheon of Pleiades
rising wordless on our worded minds; mortal
women touched by heaven’s immortal hands.
Vibrant myths born out of gendered avowals,
five women drawn in cosmic dust on a blue-black,
empyrean realm; anachronisms in a world of men,
bold women seducing Gods, unwed mothers, many
times husbanded sensuous sirens, manoeuvring wives.
Manipulating queens, well emboldened in statecraft,
tilting empires. Woe begotten earthy spirits challenging
an angry sky. Can these star-crossed women be contained
in heaven’s architraves? They are not distant stars orbiting
cosmic paths in silver braids, calibrating universal secrets.
They are not empowered deities, conspiring against feral fate,
redeeming sinners. Let me extol them not to redeem myself.
Let me invoke them in verse, these feisty feminine archetypes,
destiny’s rivals who fan fires of revenge in unravelled hair,
tongues of flame, regenerate curse and epic dreams.
Fire born beings with endless female hungers,
configuring a parallel celestial world. Complex,
conniving, controversial, chthonic goddesses
turning into five sacred myths in elemental metonymy
and astral metaphor; fiery stars defying their fates.
{Acknowledging Pradip Bhattacharya’s Panchakanya: The Five Virgins of Indian Epics.
The Sanskrit hymn, at the beginning of the poem, invokes the Five Virgins or Pancha Kanya; the recital of which is supposed to redeem sinners.}
Poems from Usha’s Collection:-
On Manannan’s Isle
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Ganesh Utsav
Come immerse yourself in my tears,
elephant boy, let me gather the sighs
that flower in my mind and adorn your feet.
All day long, milling crowds gather
in whirling thoughts, bells ring
in the wind, conches blow in the waves
and a fragrance rises in the mists.
Let me dip my heart in camphor
and light it to illumine your face.
Let my prayers fly down as autumn
leaves and scent your hands.
Caught between light and dark, living
in the aesthetic of nowhere, my verse
loses its rhythm. All alone, I stand
on a distant shore, with a bowlful
of kheer to tickle your elephant tastes.
Come Ganesha, bathe in the Irish Sea…
On Teaching The Tempest
I begin with the elements of drama –
Unities of time, place and the rest.
Suspending disbelief, I proceed
through the pages of a language
not my own, crisscrossed
by sheer, Indian womanhood.
I tread carefully through an island
of metaphors. Somewhere in me,
a tempest flames, parts and flames
yet again. Miranda’s voice is hushed
by mumbo-jumbo as a tyrant magician
philosophises over goety. Caliban rolls
in the dark recesses of my heart,
an accident like me, taught
to moon-worship in an alien tongue.
I dance in the air like a harpy,
a humane spirit trapped in time.
The Gods alight before me
and perform their masquerades.
I end in smiles for a bard, who
gives me the stuff of dreams.
Only Setebos is lost at sea…
Monsoon Nights
Those nights on the long verandah,
with plantain pillars, squirrel beams
and bird rafters. The flickering oil lamp
throws shadows on the panelled wooden walls
with heartbeats, as the last raindrops dance
to the beat of thunder drums. Grandmother’s
tales drone on as Anantha, Vasuki and Shesha
sway to the bheen of drunken monsoon winds,
their jewels throwing sparkles of speckled light
at the staggering coconut palms. The smell
of sand perfumes the air in a trapeze of fireflies
and a courtyard quivers in the lap of the pale moon,
in the south-western corner of a distant nation
I call motherland, where eyes meet eyes
in greeting and languages melt in smiles.
Those monsoon nights rising from a fond letter
are drowned in cups of Darjeeling chai,
as a Manx morning wakes up to a tiger sky.