[A]

Poetry happens when the limited self trips over a stray live wire of the unbounded. Poems are the sparks.

You gain this, you lose that. Here koels don’t sing away the long summer afternoons, but a cardinal streaks the morning air like a bloodied thumb.

Stripped of bark by rain, wind and insects, fallen trees gleam white – the forest’s bones.

What is a forest but a poem lying on its back, and gazing at the sky?

“The agent that provokes both the erotic art and the poetic act is imagination. Imagination turns sex into ceremony and rite, language into rhythm and metaphor. The poetic image is an embrace of opposite realities, and rhyme a copulation of sounds; poetry eroticizes language and the world because its operation is erotic to begin with.” ~ Octavio Paz, from his brilliant collection of essays, ‘The Double Flame – Love and Eroticism’.

“The very word metaphor, with its roots in Greek words for bearing across, describes a sort of migration, the migration of ideas into images” ~ Salman Rushdie from his book of non fictions ‘Imaginary Homelands’.

[B]

The two sections of Bible’s Old Testament worth reading closely are Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs in that order. It is appropriate to first begin with a meditation on vanity – “all is vanity” says the poet of Ecclesiastes - and only then go on to the Song that sings of Eros wanting to approach God or Eden, and perhaps succeeds. These two impulses are also what Nikos Kazantzakis writes about in the Prologue of his novel (deemed heretical by the fucked up ‘Church’) ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’, where he says

“My principal anguish and the source of all my joys and sorrows from my youth onward has been the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh. Within me are the dark immemorial forces of the Evil One, human and pre-human; within me too are the luminous forces, human and pre-human, of God – and my soul is the arena where these two armies have clashed and met”

Of the New Testament (in the committee sanctioned version of course), it is useful to get a copy of the “red” version. All of ‘thus spake Jesus, the great carpenter man’, is marked out in red, to be read by both the ‘believers’ and the ‘heathen’ (like me), in such a version. There is much a poet can learn about rhythm, pacing, imagery etc from these treasures hidden in the Bible – one of the two books that Rilke always carried with him.

[C]

The folks at NYT Book Review must have been peeking in through the window behind my bed at the book pile next to my pillow, for this week’s review features two books on subjects I am currently reading about, and have been thinking about in the recent past: Iran and India.

The book reviewed on the cover page is a memoir of Iran – ‘In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs’ by Christopher de Bellaigue, and is reviewed by that highly nomadic creature who is called Pico Iyer (I have always wondered which Tam Bhram parents could have named their son Pico instead of the more regular Muragan, Ramaswami etc?). Apart from detailing the fascinating smoke, mirrors and daggers world of Iran I had been reading about elsewhere –few examples: rich young women in suburban Tehran giving blowjobs to their boyfriends in order to preserve their ‘virginity’ till their marriage to their first cousins, or receiving effusive dinner invitations that one is meant to refuse – the review was illustrated by photographs of stunningly beautiful young Iranian women (here are is one photo). And thus taking me twice as long to fall a sleep last night! In this context it also occurred to me that extreme repression (as in Iran) or extreme freedom (without responsibility, as in say USA) always sets off centrifugal demons; morals police or ‘komiteh’ drive young people of Iran to desperate measures to breathe, while ‘free’ sex, ‘degenerate’ music etc engender the ‘family values’ hypocrites of USA.

The second review featured a book 'The Rise of the Indian Rope Trick' by Peter Lamont, which exposes the ‘Great Indian Rope Trick’ to be a hoax, and the creation of an inventive and mendacious young reporter for Chicago Turbine circa 1890. Thankfully I have never been asked by anyone here if I have ever witnessed this trick. Likewise no one has ever asked me if I rode an elephant to school, although I have been often asked if I spoke ‘hindu’ or what I thought (this with an ironic grin or smile at such barbarism) of the ‘arranged’ marriage (here I must report that I have become a full time apologist for arranged marriages, even though I may not partake of it myself).

Yesterday night my friend João handed me a digital camera, and commanded me to run around till I capture at least 100 images.

So like a dutiful disciple I went to Lullwater to undertake this assignment. And some of what got trapped as pixels can be found here. Thank you Sensei João for giving me this start.

If you go there do look for the Poet's Log - that is where the two 'poems' of today got written. Also however screwed up this Republic might be, it still has much beauty to offer to the eye.

We strike out on what has become A back road – this was an open vein Down which King Cotton once flowed.

Sweet Jesus! How many lashes, and How many bones of blood Hounds and men – both master and slave Looking at each other under the mirror of Red clay – lie under the asphalt road Shimmering like a mirage under summer sun?

Yes one has to admit, here there was once Graciousness and beauty in hoop skirts too. Old silver gleamed under chandeliers in Antebellum homes, and feet twirled to The fiddles played to the imagined Rhythms of banned drums.

Of that time, the waxy drawn out Speech (we sure do talk real slow Down here ) and religiosity (now Billboards that mix one measure Of messiah with one measure of Patriotism – JesUSAves, yes sweet Jesus again!) still stud this land

As we pass through a chain of towns With one traffic light and one level crossing, Each with a Main Street lined with scabby Gutted brick buildings and boarded up stores, Houses with wide porches, in which speckled Old men in suspenders and bill caps rock away Long afternoons and lunches of Cornpone and fired chicken.

And a stray black man shuffling down These lonesome streets, still carrying Wariness (and weariness) under his shirt. Sweet Jesus! What am I doing here, A brown man driving around with you, White woman, impossible wife (marrying You would have been breaking law and Facing prison roughly hundred years ago)?

You press my free, raging hand As we quickly shoot through Ugliness – chain shit-taurants (Billions and billions of ‘shit’ Already served), chain stores (Where young women can work At the counters all days and go To bed hungry), and sheds in The distance smelling of chicken Shit or hog shit.

And then we burst into Grace – mile upon mile Of pecan orchards. Sweet Jesus! How can I not take Down the instruments from The willows, and not sing One of Lord’s songs to you, Sweet woman, strange woman, Whose hand I clutch at every Year, harder and harder?