Karthika Naïr
(India)
Karthika Nair talks to Global Poetry System:
Zero degrees: between boundaries*
I met them first in a land where borders
get blurred; where day rises before night’s end
and water morphs into high, brumal walls.
A warrior and a monk, two beings –
flanked by shadows that grow and roam at will –
cross-legged in thought, carving with four hands
arabesques on force, loss, fear – close at hand
– and some big runes – selfhood, death – that border
waking hours, and shape dreams against my will.
Their words whirl in unison to the ends
of still skies, etch a tale of life being
pruned to papers; of puny men who wall
up futures, then watch unmoved as the walls
and roofs of egos tumble: sleight of hand;
nuke name, nation, calling – the very being
– then revel, leave the body on the border
of reality… the words trail jerk/ end/
lost in this past, unsure of where they will
be sent next. The shadows step in, strong-willed,
free; spin stretch swallow space and bounce off walls.
Warrior and Monk rise and mirror, end
to end, their shadows who recede and hand
the stage over; drift to the near border
and then vanish like mythical beings.
I leave thoughts on belonging, on being
and the zeroth law that I willfully
signed, and watch them – one compact, bordering
short; the other pale and spare – vault streaked walls
of culture and kinetic codes. Lock hands
embrace dodge thrust. The duet/duel ends
before I read which is which, if one’s end
spells start elsewhere. Threat and trust were being
swirled in synchronized moves till just a hand
was seen, a smudge. Then Warrior’s great will
and body juddered to a sudden crash; walled
by a stillness that steals through any border.
Monk departs, a worn being in his hands,
crooning of a day when borders and walls
will cease; midst white shells of spent words, I end.
*Inspired by the 2005 duet by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui & Akram Khan
Meridians I
Half-past three in Vellayani: they are waking
the gods, one by one, with conch shells that blow off warm
quilts of hush, rose-water baths and sandalwood scrubs
for sludge from the hesternal pleas of devotees
and a half-open lotus for each pair of feet
while day awaits in damp muslin by the temple
doorway, dripping light – and early, unformed blessings
that cupped paternal hands collect with the same hope
you must have held the parchment etching my future
thirty-five harvests back; then carry down a mile
of winding belief (morning rustling underfoot),
tiptoeing home to lay them along a headboard
whence they trickle on the snowdrift of a pillow,
and seep through folds of igneous, agnostic dreams.
Interregnum
Is it day where you are, or does the moon
loiter overhead, watching you like I
used to, tracing with an unsteady breath
those eyes, sleeping brows, the arc of a smile?
Do your hands still stray unbidden at night,
angling to fold my beat within your heart?
It is an odd, wakeful creature, my heart,
tossing gravelly queries at the moon –
as though to smash the murky pane of night
and retrieve a name, a latitude I
seek: the exact location of your smile.
Delhi, Dhaka, I cite under my breath,
Bangkok, Beijing, or up north where the breath
scars the air still, white (like absence a heart):
Vostok, Yukon? Legends that made us smile
once, and contrail maps under a half-moon.
You had checked airline schedules while I
counted cash and clean socks that muggy night.
Your last letter said they woke you at night:
strands of memory that cut off a breath;
roving thoughts you cannot call to heel. I
find those in the mail, addressed to my heart,
dropped by the same russet-tinted moon
wearing faded love bites and a smug smile.
Free from nations and rules, that tramp can smile:
no trolled borders lie between her and night!
Not celestial travellers like the moon,
you and I fill up forms, plead, hold our breath;
cling to vagrant hope that an unknown heart
will relent, sign, scrawl ten digits. Then I,
decked in new, numbered dignity, yes! I
could indulge this tropism towards your smile;
rush across to you, blood back to the heart.
Swathed as one in the ample down of night,
we’d learn anew to synchronise the breath
of desire, and shut out the strident moon.
Till then, though, there is just the moon as I
carve with hushed breath the template of a smile,
sword to end the siege of night on my heart.
Afterwards
It still feels new, this moment metronoming my days.
Fuzzy-edged, it stretches like a twilight shadow,
while sore eyes adrift on a trolley lift in a haze.
Liveried attendants on wheels speck the weaving space,
blue-green with steel legs and burdens – yes, them I greet, though
it still feels new. This moment metronoming my days
returns for the thirtieth time; I wake sliced by blunt rays
hurled from a murky sky whose clouds clog my throat and slow
sore eyes adrift on a trolley sifting through a haze,
seeking feet, hands, a human voice, someone in this maze
of steel widgets and sterile breaths to tell me they know
it must feel new, this moment metronoming my days.
My hand, decked with lifelines, reaches a papery face –
mine: a far planet, arid, though streams spurt rust and flow.
Then sore eyes adrift on a trolley peer past the haze
of thiopentane and pain to snag a surgeon’s cool gaze;
he rakes my chest, and proclaims to a nurse, “It will snow.”
Yes, it stays new, this moment metronoming my days,
when sore eyes adrift on a trolley lift in a haze.
Plain speaking: serenade of a stalker
Thirty-three years, two months and seven whirls
of the Earth on ageing toes: I have wooed
her smile through cities, seasons, the spread of
ink beneath those eyes – with all the longing
of an insomniac for sleep’s exiled
embrace. Seldom have I let that face bolt
from my gaze. No stakes, locks or windows
with bars could block my path; they should have told
her right at the start: I am what you’d call
the persistent sort. But refined too, I
was sent to the right schools: switch off the stars
before spearing a throat with throbbing tongue;
leave blood-roses by the pillow, after –
or a choker, five ruby welts set in
purple filigree for a slender neck.
Follow firm the old strictures of courtship,
timely reminders, even when apart:
a blank call at breakfast, sweet nothings sent
up blushing veins while at the grocer’s …
an errant heartbeat at noon – an echo
of me in the mirror? Yes, souvenirs
of desire to tell her I’m never far.
Yet my suit lies spurned afresh: she is riled,
and the litany of love’s failings long.
I never knock, nor say when I will come.
My constancy robbed her of the suitors
from her youth, my shadow of space to grow.
Thirty-three years, two months and seven whirls
of the Earth on ageing toes: proof of rare
passion, yes, I see you nod. All reduced
to restraining orders, and a black curse
on my head. Starched witches in blue hunt me
with pellets and poison darts; once, they,
with lead-clad kinsmen, strapped me in a hull,
strobed me to smithereens like a mad dog.
But love lingers in pieces, as I do.
The moon may forsake its night oft and on,
but not I my prize: shards are better still
to enter each pore, swim in her waters
and court her thoughts. If possession be nine-
tenths of the law, I rule her breath, blazon
my colours ’cross the frontiers of her skin.
Yet I wait, and wait again, for all my
reign, in the hope of recognition in
a smile, and unclenched eyes to make me whole.
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NB: The above five poems are from my collection Bearings (HarperCollins India, 2009)
Habits: Resistance
I didn’t mean to I swear I didn’t mean to
write or call or recollect but out there prowls night
a dapper demented night satin slippers cloak
visor the works wielding sparking pain and a moon
a flammable moon in gloved hands set to ignite
belly marrow muscle pharynx scorch synapses
in a right cortex then snipe snipe with blithe intent
membranes on the nape of a neck for target practice
and plant thistles between ribs strafing the refrain
Quizas Quizas Quizas all along to vanish
survivors language longing learning the ground
underfoot thought will try and flee to you sane you
Six thousand miles south to a mound a metronomed
mound bedclothes and hand-woven dreams voice wrapped around
my absent chest hands flexed to draw and transfuse free
breath and will from four superconductive fingers
to lungs waterboarded by fire phlegm blood and fear
old fear hard to defuse and thumb stroke-stroke-stroking
a path away from safety into training camps
for shell-shocked conscriptees one where honourable
discharge is never an option and deserters
detained as long as the sun twelve billion years
of dapper demented night in satin slippers
with no more your voice nor fingers for sanity
There are days when I hate you for the endless battle
mine not yours that you sustain by reviving breath
I could hate you already for such a tomorrow
where you might not be to bookend this being.
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http://www.hindu.com/mp/2009/09/15/stories/2009091550570100.htm
Karthika Naïr is the author of a poetry collection, Bearings (HarperCollins India, 2009).
She was born in India, lives in Paris, and works as a producer in performing arts. This proximity to performing arts, and to dance, in particular, is refracted in much of her poetry, which has been published in several anthologies and journals including Asymptote, Indian Literature, Caravan India, Mediterranean Poetry, Terre à Ciel, Penguin’s 60 Indian Poets and the Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets, The Literary Review and The Poetry Review. Her poems have been translated into French and Italian.
Naïr co-scripted British-Bangladeshi choreographer Akram Khan’s piece, Desh – which won the 2012 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production. Young Zubaan (India) and Editions Hélium (France) will soon be bringing out The Boy, the Bees and Bonbibi, one of the stories she wrote for Desh, as a children’s book illustrated by Joëlle Jolivet. She is currently working on her next collection, an account of the Mahabharata war in 18 voices.