coldnoon: travel poetics (september '11)
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International Journal of Travel Writing Print ISSN 2278-9642 Online ISSN 2278-9650 www.coldnoon.comTRANSCRIPT
COLDNOON: TRAVEL POETICS (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING)
(ONLINE ISSN 2278-9650 | PRINT ISSN 2278-9642)
NO. 1 | SEP ‘11 | 1.1
ED. ARUP K CHATTERJEE
COLDNOON: TRAVEL POETICS
(INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING)
ISSUE I | SEP ‘11 | 1.1
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 (Sep ‘11, 1.1) 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_Sep’11/1.1.html
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi 110067 India
www.coldnoon.com
Contents
Introduction
Editorial
Arunima Sen
Arup K Chatterjee
Amit Ranjan
Brian Wrixon
Mohan Rana
Veronica Pamoukaghlian
Vishesh Unni Raghunathan
Editorial Board
1
5
8
14
25
34
41
49
57
63
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Sep ‘11, No. 1.1 | www.coldnoon.com
Introduction | GJV Prasad | p. 1 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Introduction
by GJV Prasad
Prasad, GJV. “Introduction.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.1 (2011): 1-4. Web.
http://www.coldnoon.com/pdf/Coldnoon_TravelPoetics_Sep’11/GJVPrasad.pdf
Licensed Under:
"Introduction" (by GJV Prasad) 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_Sep’11/GJVPrasad
.html
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Sep ‘11, No. 1.1 | www.coldnoon.com
Introduction | GJV Prasad | p. 2 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Introduction
by GJV Prasad
When I was asked by Arup Chatterjee to write the introduction to the first
issue of this online journal, Coldnoon, I was happy for more than one reason.
The first is that this has been Arup’s dream for a while - to give space to poetry,
to publish a journal that would showcase and celebrate new poets and new
poetry - and I was truly happy that he had realized his vision. The second
reason was in continuation of the first - that there was now such a space for
poetry, another significant meeting point for poets and other lovers of poetry.
The more spaces for poetry that we have, the more we see language in intense
action, the more we see how our world is born of the collision and unexpected
coming together of words, the more we will treasure our planet and our
universe, for it is born of such accidents and such great artifice. We need other
people’s imaginations to help us view and re-view the world for we cannot
begin to comprehend it otherwise. We need our writers to travel the world for
us, for writers travel even when they have never left home. All writing is born
of disjunction, of unrest, of an imagination of other possibilities - writing
cannot come from the complacency of rootedness. Coldnoon is a quarterly of
travel poetry in English - and poetry must travel and nothing travels faster than
on the net at this moment.
Travel has unexpected results - after all we who were at the receiving
end of such colonial travel should know this. Whether you see unexpected
sights or expected ones, travel is always a process; travel is destiny, your
destination. Two Australians, John Lang and Alice Richman, both of whom
died in India, come together after a century and a half in a poem (“To John
Lang and Alice Richman”) by Amit Ranjan who says:
Alice and John did not know each other
but their graves have known me.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Sep ‘11, No. 1.1 | www.coldnoon.com
Introduction | GJV Prasad | p. 3 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Vishesh Unni Raghunathan writes about the breathless city, one full of
“Tall buildings with cemented wishes”, one which is a “Hoarder of hope” and
“refuses to unwind-/ Lest success be seen as nothing but a distant skyscraper”
(“The City”). Mohan Rana notices how
Sand has flown from the Sahara in the night,
crossing lands and seas to fall on this city. (“The Morning Post”)
He wears a mask, he says, “made specially for this poem”. Who said
travel cannot infect? It should be noted that his poems have been translated
from the original Hindi by Lucy Rosenstein, some with Bernard O’Donoghue
and one with “The Poetry Translation Workshop” while one of them has been
translated by her alone.
Brian Wixon alerts us to the fact that others can make us travel, that
spaces move on when people have finished with them:
The old mine stands in silent witness
Its value torn out and carted away. (“The Old Mine”)
Veronica Pamoukaghlian speaks of identifying and not identifying with
people, of the hidden and the known that you come across as you travel:
The skies are calm
the darkness coming
the mosque awaits
but not for me (“The Music of the Mosque”).
Arunima Sen wants the landscape to come alive but knows the
transience of experience:
We try the autumn trick together, same time
Same place, some thousand miles away.
It’s gone, beloved, behind the peaks of pattern
It’s now only an autumn left behind (“Autumn Shadows”).
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Sep ‘11, No. 1.1 | www.coldnoon.com
Introduction | GJV Prasad | p. 4 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
You can travel in retrospect, but that travel is done alone. Arup K
Chatterjee begins his section with a humorous poem about how your work can
travel under someone else’s name. Your life is a travel through time, time that
is eternal while your life is temporary, a fact that can be reiterated by even that
which is made by man and changes with time:
The house opposite has been advertised
Utensils and prescriptions enter the stack
Is Dacres Lane still too young to be surprised
Or have I been too late in coming back? (“As the Crow Flies”)
I have not spoken of all the poems or all the riffs on the theme of travel -
that is for you the reader to discover as you travel through the issue. You may
not take in all the sights, but what you will read will surely be rewarding in the
way that poetry and travel always enrich you.
G J V Prasad.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Sep ‘11, No. 1.1 | www.coldnoon.com
Editorial | p. 5 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Editorial
Chatterjee, Arup K. “Editorial.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.1 (2011): 5-7. Web.
http://www.coldnoon.com/pdf/Coldnoon_TravelPoetics_Sep’11/Editorial.pdf
Licensed Under:
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ml
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Editorial | p. 6 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Editorial
To the First Readers Of,
Coldnoon,
“So, I like travelling with a purpose”, someone told me. Somehow I could
sense the implication of patronage. What happens to the traveller without a
patron? Volition, one might suggest, is the chief patron always, the desire to
travel alone drives you through. But, what if travelling was no more a voluntary
leisure? Yes, I am definitely talking of some vagabonds, here. But I am more
inclusively referring to all of us. Like all of us love and go to war, we all travel
without volition too. We all travel purposelessly. The only difference is we do
not report those travelogues. Probably we do not look around as much, do not
photograph or ask questions to companions. Mostly, we have no companions.
The ants tone in line with their tribe and we let them pass, we do not kill or
describe. Am I implying the inward eye, which sees it all? Certainly, I am. But
this inward eye is not so powerful, or supernatural as it has been worshipped
as. It is inward only insofar as it is subliminal. Is it then subaltern, too?
Probably, yes, because that purposelessness in travel is not a state of joy or
melancholia. It is a passive state of feelings, yes, but ones that do not qualify as
either. It is a stream of consciousness. Where no words are rhymed, no plots
novelised, no intellect stimulated and no desire perpetuated. What do we talk
of those hundreds of people we have seen climbing on a bus or drinking from a
cup of tea, almost as we are doing the same. And, if we take all those frames of
one act or the other, lined up with only the hundreds of faces changed, only
the act remaining, how many discernible aspects of those faces could we
enumerate? Very few, if at all. There was no volition or purpose then, but we
were travelling, nonetheless. It is this lack of agency that Coldnoon’s travels will
be about. Well, mostly about, for we cannot always force the poet not to
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Sep ‘11, No. 1.1 | www.coldnoon.com
Editorial | p. 7 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
observe. Eventually, if the poet has travelled, and taken the reader’s heart
alongwith on a similar journey, both our purpose and purposelessness are
fulfilled.
We inaugurate Coldnoon to revive travel in poetry. We would be
pleasantly surprised if readers took this as the onset of a new genre of poetry.
However, a little discussion on the English ballads of the three centuries that
have preceded ours will remove all suspicions about the commonness of travel
poetry. Very simply, then, we would be the new poets of travelogues. Life
moves on as we say, but I doubt sometimes if this is true. In conceptualising
Coldnoon I have realised that although our bodies move in space and time, our
hearts and memories are suspended. The reservoirs within us contain
innumerable non-linear, non-temporal and non-spatial memories, which
follow an ideal, time and space of their own. Wherever we go, whoever we
meet, and whatever we see we try to approximate these to somewhere,
someone and something that are contained essentially in us. Historians may
understand what I write here as the basis of all settlements and colonisations.
Our travels and intermittent halts are the approximate realisations of our own
hearts. Purpose is never to begin with, but always follows. We have begun our
journey now, we gladly lack purpose today. And for the preservation of what
we have begun we are aware that purposes may seep in soon. However, no
purpose can be entirely in solipsism, and that is what we have been plagued
with. We are the solipsistic travellers who do not seek a traveller’s community
but only hope to stay as honest speakers to and for those who have ever risked
travelling as we who have been forced to. We shall always remain like:
A lone discoverer in these menacing realms
Guarded like termite cities from the sun,
Oppressed mid crowd and tramp and noise and flare,
Passing from dusk to deeper dangerous dusk (Canto VII: The
Descent into Night, Savitri, Sri Aurobindo)
Life upon Coldnoon is an underrated challenge. I look forward to your
participation in it.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Sep ‘11, No. 1.1 | www.coldnoon.com
Arunima Sen | p. 8 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Arunima Sen
Sen, Arunima. “Poems by Arunima Sen.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.1 (2011): 8-13.
Web.
http://www.coldnoon.com/pdf/Coldnoon_TravelPoetics_Sep’11/ArunimaSen.pdf
Licensed Under:
"Poems by Arunima Sen" 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_Sep’11/ArunimaSe
n.html
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Arunima Sen | p. 9 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Arunima Sen
Travelogue
Day 1
By then my face had disintegrated into
a million pieces, if you were careful, you
could almost make out how each part
must have crawled together to form an
orb-like apparatus sitting heavily on
my neck. But then you would have had
to be very careful, meticulous, inspired
even. I sat faceless on a wooden bench
at the corner of a road embracing a
forgotten hill at the edge of a range.
As the sun slipped steadily on the icy
mountain sides, the skies pulled taut
around my neck in amber and red, it
choked, strangled, mauled my mind.
I broke out in amorphous wails, silently,
invincibly.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Sep ‘11, No. 1.1 | www.coldnoon.com
Arunima Sen | p. 10 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Day 2
It was foggy all around, the valley
was suffering in sterile serenity. As
a passerby, I sometimes leaned for
a flower, stepped on a twig or even
cooed at a wooly dog desperate to
ease the ancient wrinkles of her skin.
I reached out to the stifling haze, tried
touching the wet heavens with sullen
fingers, making the murky morning
filthy with my breath. If only she could
sigh smoke, belch fire and heave
mythical rage out of her belly, I knew
she would then be mine. I knew somehow
I would move her to resonate the love
I must leave behind. I stretched out
towards her deep vortex, my body
pressed hard to the unyielding rails.
Moments passed. She did not yield.
Behind me I heard the shuffling
of bewildered shrunken feet, he sat
hunched with pretentious nonchalance
at a corner. I turned back to my game
of baiting my hills alive, wafts of
marijuana filtered to my nostrils.
Behind me the man’s head burst
into pregnant flames.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Sep ‘11, No. 1.1 | www.coldnoon.com
Arunima Sen | p. 11 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Day 3
She woke me up with an urgency
in the rented room, she held my
hands and pressed them to her breast.
She cried that the morning was losing
all the stars to the famished grey, that
I must tell her, now, right now, of my
songs of the day. I took her girlish
head in my palms, shook her awake.
Told her, in soft scratchy tones of
how time would slowly feed on our
night, leaving a reeking carcass behind.
It will bare its pointy teeth and
incessantly gnaw at the moments she
fears losing now. Of course we will
recognize it, and on greyer days we
will proudly proclaimed it as ours.
The song I sang therefore was of
timeless travellers, the scavengers of
hills and the nights that had
decayed behind.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Sep ‘11, No. 1.1 | www.coldnoon.com
Arunima Sen | p. 12 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Autumn Shadows
You had very recently stupefied me, a hurried plan
A very cautious execution and autumn arrived at us.
The Tibetan monastery, a pink silk scarf,
The very first rains which ruined our lazy walk,
The disillusioned man at the local curio shop,
have all reached into the furrowed yellow leaf
lying closely near my aged aching suitcase.
Autumn has now passed, the museum now left behind
With a feathery moon washed behind a tall tower,
The jingling doors of a tucked away bar,
A chocolate filled tumbler of greater hands,
And a meandering track of the railway gods.
Winter had died a pallid death that year,
Tucked its head never to be born again,
We try the autumn trick together, same time
Same place, some thousand miles away.
It’s gone, beloved, behind the peaks of pattern
It’s now only an autumn left behind,
It’s now a rhythm tantalizing my alone
When I read yellow books, born in soulless minds.
Yet, a magic spell befell a passing hour,
As a practiced train followed a practiced turn,
It seems you caged autumn between wheels
Spinning drowsy dreams as my shadows burn.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Sep ‘11, No. 1.1 | www.coldnoon.com
Arunima Sen | p. 13 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Capture
My vacation, therapeutic, healed me
Made me whole again, enriched my vision,
Fed my thoughts, cajoled the frayed ends,
Completed the names half formed in fatigue.
My vacation, energetic, possessed me
Brought back essential vitality, cured my blank,
Called out in echoes over horizons
In an utterly new language: crisp, short.
Click. Click. Click. And that’s all. My vacation called.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Sep ‘11, No. 1.1 | www.coldnoon.com
From, Hundred Miles Around Dacres Lane | Arup K Chatterjee | p. 14 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
from, Hundred Miles Around Dacres Lane
by Arup K Chatterjee
Chatterjee, Arup K. “From, Hundred Miles Around Dacres Lane.” Coldnoon: Travel
Poetics 1.1 (2013): 14-24. Web.
http://www.coldnoon.com/pdf/Coldnoon_TravelPoetics_Sep’11/ArupKChatterjee
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.
http://www.coldnoon.com/copyright/Coldnoon_TravelPoetics_Sep’11/ArupKCha
tterjee.html
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Sep ‘11, No. 1.1 | www.coldnoon.com
From, Hundred Miles Around Dacres Lane | Arup K Chatterjee | p. 15 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
from, Hundred Miles Around Dacres Lane
by Arup K Chatterjee
A Letter and a Reverie
To,
Dear Mr. Amulya Sarkar,
We have received the manuscript of your poems, which we greatly appreciate.
You will be glad to know that we think your poetry has a charm very amicable
with the style of the poet Mr. Nirmal Kanti Singha.
His new volume of poetry that will feature one hundred of his collected
poems is going into print later this month. Of this forthcoming book, we have
secured the sole rights of publication. However, we have had to suspend
printing temporarily due to want of poems, twenty or so. Our editor Mr. Navin
Sonthalia requires them in a style fresher than what the poet has so far been
known for.
Despite being unable to tender us with the needful, Mr. Singha has,
nevertheless, obliged to let us include some of your poems under his name.
Here at, the matter rests entirely with you, and we are confident of your
assistance to us in this delicate circumstance.
We are also desirous of considering your poetry for a future anthology
of poems. Presently we, singularly, solicit your help in the stated venture.
Admiringly Yours,
Vibhas Sharma
Asst. Editor
Metempsychosis.
____________
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Sep ‘11, No. 1.1 | www.coldnoon.com
From, Hundred Miles Around Dacres Lane | Arup K Chatterjee | p. 16 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
What to write in a recollection of
An experience in surrogacy
From the window berth of a long-bound train
An experience that is never your own?
At Monghyr platform over telephone
One father bellowed to his son
The mother was waitlistedly boarded
He wore the badge of a constable
And cried, that, to guard ministers
During the elections, was a humid task.
Such things are seen when a town is seen
From beyond its outermost border
Then, waiting is nearly a costly affair
For, what to write of the beggar children
Faking the snot at their windworn nostrils
Is this the portrait’s final veneer?
A name is commonly a paltry deed
In all travelogic imagination
Seldom a Masjid is without a name
Far seldom a nameless burning Ghat
Prayed and burned in nomenclature.
We came to the river namely Ganga
As I stood in the lavatory upon
The mid-river by banks of Allahabad.
Through the impure window a glow appeared
Aloft the temple spire, and a man’s shadow
Walked uphill the temple stairs
Below, the fishing boats hibernated,
Their ablutions deferred till the evening conch
Blown in breath and wrinkles unknown
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Sep ‘11, No. 1.1 | www.coldnoon.com
From, Hundred Miles Around Dacres Lane | Arup K Chatterjee | p. 17 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Flurrying through an eight ‘o’ clock bazaar
Chain pullers with bottles for Gangajal -
There was no one in a terrace apartment
The bed-cloth was dishevelled on the bed
Television gleamed in that corner room
And smoke rose from a faraway factory.
The last to come was a belled buffalo
Squatting in a narrow lane before
A flame from an anonymous earthen lamp
Not all veneration is worth a name
And neither the train had the time to wait
When waiting was nearly a costly affair
In a delay of thirty hours of fog
I saw it all from the lavatory window
And when I came out I wrote
Namelessly.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Sep ‘11, No. 1.1 | www.coldnoon.com
From, Hundred Miles Around Dacres Lane | Arup K Chatterjee | p. 18 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
As the Crow Flies
By here the city is of robust guilt
From mornings that swirl into jilipi
To afternoons’ grease on sweet loaf eggs
Or some stewed mutton, enriched in penance
Of the daemon that a sage digested
At evening a gelusil breeze purloins
The file of visitors homeward away
Leaving Dacres lane to the dogs and bones
Calcutta has gone off to sleep once more
The starch on my curtains is turning stale
When the wind travels in the corridor
It carries my childhood upon its tail
No, the youth has not stopped memorizing
Of tales that places have lungs of their own
In a world of competing nostalgias
I chide my memory when Google Images
Returns those photographs in black and white
Even from the eighteen seventy five
To me, while Dacres lane was only born
On the day of father’s first salary
My sleep has been racing with the azaan
Though starch in the city is cheaply found
And soon from the mosque of Tipu Sultan
Prayers will unbridle the morning’s hound
Again the ceremony of belching forth
Again the crossing of old images
Again the global grandchildren arrive
From Bhawanipore Babus’ residences
One of their grandfathers is haggling still
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Sep ‘11, No. 1.1 | www.coldnoon.com
From, Hundred Miles Around Dacres Lane | Arup K Chatterjee | p. 19 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
With a vestigial rickshaw puller
No price chart is ever so sacred when
The quality of extinction is unrestrained
The house opposite has been advertised
Utensils and prescriptions enter the stack
Is Dacres Lane still too young to be surprised
Or have I been too late in coming back?
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Sep ‘11, No. 1.1 | www.coldnoon.com
From, Hundred Miles Around Dacres Lane | Arup K Chatterjee | p. 20 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
The House on Sale
From behind the window glass of their rooms
The walkers appear sepia-tinted.
Without a motion in her twelvemonth day
Shadows are unchangingly colourless
At night, from a helium-dome on the wall
Pale glimmers pave across the knee-cushion
To warm near her groin, after midnight leaves,
While an infrequent wind sounds like a muse
To an ageing poet from the upper storey,
Writing of a reindeer, in iambic.
Many mornings come and peep in blushful stride
Withdrawing their smudge in a guest-like manner
Before the water kept boiling for tea
Can singe the sleepy nails of either host.
Ailing two months as a pregnant spinster
She prayed it was the courier-walla
With an eye recompensing lost slumber, and
Another preserving a sepia dream.
Instead of her seducer’s marriage proposal
She read the poet’s furtive note
A sonnet was written in rain-merged ink
She felt the powder of her tearless face
With a burning belly to grieve her to sleep
But still she was hearing some doorbell’s clang
When the ageing poet began upstairs
His last effort to show as a suitor
Here, the daily hush of every night
Arrived sooner than the city’s other parts
And the next morning’s newspapers bore
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Sep ‘11, No. 1.1 | www.coldnoon.com
From, Hundred Miles Around Dacres Lane | Arup K Chatterjee | p. 21 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
A modest blemish on the celebrations
Of a Communist loss from yesternoon
Another Septimus had a heart to climb -
(When a rain mist drops on Calcutta,
Some local will still call it London) -
To his final flight, as the door-knobs of both
The doors of the mistress and the poet
Were being revolved
The floor from which the deceased had fallen
Was nowhere to be seen in the report:
“But, that a chain in lives of three inmates
Had broken at twenty one past ten, sharp”,
When by the drunken revellers of Trinamool
The doors had been heard from athwart the stairs
To lull the noise of breaking glass.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Sep ‘11, No. 1.1 | www.coldnoon.com
From, Hundred Miles Around Dacres Lane | Arup K Chatterjee | p. 22 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Perhaps it Snowed
Some swollen dreams have trickled until
The late hours of my afternoon.
A rain that leaves languor to the flesh,
Was seen at about dawn, falling against
The silhouette of smoke around lamp-posts.
Now vapours from the thawing of rust
Bring a heavy stench from thereupon -
Those mottled birches that had been
Unused railway tracks until yesternight.
Last night no such storm was felt,
No fires were pelted and nothing burned.
Only a few fissures were found leaking.
They have turned a little bluish now.
At every breath in this soggy dusk
Something bulges inwards and melts me,
And the molten entrails from within
Keep splashing against the walls of my skin
While certain wounds shall be made bulbous,
Some sores will ripen and later be sealed
Much earlier than the forthcoming monsoon,
Water in this season is not rare -
A cluster of reasons kept long haunting,
Then some have grown among the showers too.
By noonday they all had formed a puddle,
Where the barber's son had left afloat
His ferry, pared of a newspaper
Whose letters were smeared soon along
Fused carbons of civilization.
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From, Hundred Miles Around Dacres Lane | Arup K Chatterjee | p. 23 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
But since evening all those reasons
Have begun seeping each into each,
And before she has brought me even one
Only an inky street remains...
Familiar faces are upturning
Murmurs are mingling with murmurs beneath
The balcony trembled moments ago
As the six-forty mail was crossing.
This is a helpful cacophony
For, there are some hours yet to be whiled
Later tonight I might be coming
To the tea-vendor at the platform,
And await the arrival of vacant trains
Emerging from prior sodden towns,
To carry such myths the postmaster told
His wife, last morning, on bicycle
Yesternight, before I made for home
At one-thirty, it had not started to rain.
There a truant candle was flickering,
As she handed the last tea for the way
Soon the nervous wind had snuffed it out
Few farewell words rose and fell in the dark
At length I saw her shadows again
While the last local was entering.
Outside the streetlamps had begun to dwindle
As her last words echoed in the idle space -
Her son whining out of a kerosene sleep;
Those arms unfolding to ease his shivers,
While in a waft of warmth she whispered -
“Perhaps it has snowed in the nearby hills”
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From, Hundred Miles Around Dacres Lane | Arup K Chatterjee | p. 24 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Perhaps it snowed in the nearby hills
And near my door, I met with the rains.
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Amit Ranjan | p. 25 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 1.1 (2011): 25-33.
Web.
http://www.coldnoon.com/pdf/Coldnoon_TravelPoetics_Sep’11/AmitRanjan.pdf
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.
http://www.coldnoon.com/copyright/Coldnoon_TravelPoetics_Sep’11/AmitRanja
n.html
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Amit Ranjan | p. 26 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Amit Ranjan
To John Lang and Alice Richman, (2008)
If die i will
which i will not
it is my will
to be given a grave
so that a hundred and fifty years later some
old wanderer
spots another
old wanderer,
not at his best;
ignominiously
at rest.
like i spotted Alice -
the stupid epitaphist
behaves like a typist
and doesn't mention
if her cheeks were like rose
but says she was born at melrose.
died in 1886 at this very spot.
died of cholera.
they never write that
on soldiers’ graves.
a poet says
she died four years before
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Amit Ranjan | p. 27 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
the epitaphist wrote his choleric prose
about dates and melrose.
poor Alice Richman,
graves do lie
or else how would keats'
name be writ in water
or is it why they say
stone-wash!
Alice’s ghost refuses
to tell anymore
but hangs around
and takes me to landour's ghosts
hills, thunder, rain, dark nights
perfect to raise a toast
to the ghost
of a Mofussilite.
a young barrister ran away from sydney
as if drunk upon the verses of sir philip sidney
and his huge desyre.
the gale of the sea done
he had to the face the ire
of the raj babus
and see gaol and dungeon
for he shook them a little
with his words and letters.
cicero he wanted to be
and barely knew fetters.
the rani of jhansi gifted him her portrait
for unably defending her sealed fate.
once he saved a child
from the seas wild
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Amit Ranjan | p. 28 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
but the seas of time
have quite drowned the man
and the name is indeed
writ on water.
he could not become dickens
but his poetry on jenny dale
and her name all around in the gale
tells a very old tale
of love.
he lies in the camel's back cemetery
camels store water on their back.
Alice and John did not know each other
but their graves have known me.
PS:
John Lang (b.1816 Paramatta, Australia, d. 1864 Mussoorie, India) was a
writer, editor and lawyer who rose to eminence in all his trades in his time, and
is quite lost to history.
Alice Richman (b1856, South Australia, d.1882 Pune, India) was the
niece of Sir James Fergusson. Her grave lies in Alice Garden, Pune
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Amit Ranjan | p. 29 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
From, Hasserghatta Bar
I
the writers, each went to a room
and i was left to a smoky gloom
and i went into my room
but there was no broom
that i could play like a guitar
so i decided to go far
and so leo and i
we two go
to the Hasserghatta Bar
Hasserghatta Bar, Hasserghatta Bar.
leo speaks korean
i speak hindi
and the bartender kannada
but we all speak one language
under the evening star
the language of Hasserghatta Bar.
II
as a korean he went to the thai ocean
and settled in bangkok commotion
and fell in love with a sex worker
but did not have courage
to marry her.
'you were married to her 500 years
ago, and you shall marry her
again in 150 hence
on this very shore'
told a seer to the korean
by the raging ocean
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Amit Ranjan | p. 30 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
leo got a big prize for telling this tale
so we celebrated it with beer and ale
under the evening star
at the Hasserghatta Bar.
into our conversation a man sticks in his nose
and it turns out he is a flower merchant
who exports zarbera and red rose.
'smell flowers by the day, and whisky by the night
and your life shall be always full of delight'
is all he wants to say.
but he wants to ask us
why the americans
divided the koreans.
and we all say
down with the republicans,
and down with the czar
under the evening star
at the Hasserghatta Bar.
and then we met a tailor
who has been a sailor
he has stitched the cloth of his life
by stitching clothes for people and their daily strife
in guwahati, in calcutta,
in benares, delhi, in bombay
he said: i could not marry
because i could not tarry
i went where the winds carried me
by my tail, i was pulled by tales and tailoring
and now i stitch by the day
and now I bitch by the night
under the evening star
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Amit Ranjan | p. 31 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
at the Hasserghatta Bar.
i have an old mother : he said
she will die
and i will cry
under the evening star
at the Hasserghatta Bar
but then i will follow the star
and follow the black tar
of the black road under the black sky
i will always be near the evening star
but far far away from the Hasserghatta Bar
and then we met an old bartender
who was also a vendor
of great drinking suggestions
and uncomfortable questions
"so what are you writing about
with a pencil on your ear, and a thoughtful pout?
today is better than yesterday,
and tomorrow better than today,
that's what they say
but aren't we all already buried in a sway
what tales are there to tell?
we are under a spell
we are dead men walking
and going on talking
as if there is no end"
this he said and there was silence
and then he said: but my friend
there is no end
to the evening star
and the beer under
the Hasserghatta Bar.
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Amit Ranjan | p. 32 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
III
On the birthday of hanuman
leo asked 'is he like superman?'
someone answered from behind:
superman is a milk drinking boy
hanuman plays with the sun like a toy.
so there was hanuman, and drums and guitar
and firecrackers bursting into many a star
that fell on the roof
of the Hasserghatta Bar
and made it feel as it was raining
in an already wet
Hasserghatta Bar.
mathilde tells me about
the danish potato-and-pig dishes
but i am lost and thinking
of Hasserghatta drinkers who drink like fishes.
annie and i are in a profound war
whether pumpkin is green or yellow
but my mind goes to the beer's golden yellow
at the Hasserghatta Bar
lin and protima, once landed
and the men were shell-shocked
totally stranded
they froze like the ice in their drink
it was a black out, nothing
to utter or to think
it was not about women
drinking at a male bar
it was the influence of the evening star
over the Hasserghatta Bar
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Amit Ranjan | p. 33 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
bottles large, some bottles small, some
men large, some men small, some
stand, some tend to fall,
some with babies dangling by their waist
with all the time, some in haste
to die drinking, some just to taste
under the evening star
at the Hasserghatta Bar.
IV
there was a huge lake here
but now when you go near
it is all earth, and all dry
and you ask
oh did it all
evaporate into the sky?
and they tell
oh well well
they needed all that water
to brew the beer
that you drink here
under the evening star
at the Hasserghatta Bar.
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Brian Wrixon | p. 34 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 1.1 (2011): 34-40.
Web.
http://www.coldnoon.com/pdf/Coldnoon_TravelPoetics_Sep’11/BrianWrixon.pdf
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.
http://www.coldnoon.com/copyright/Coldnoon_TravelPoetics_Sep’11/BrianWrix
on.html
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Brian Wrixon | p. 35 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Brian Wrixon
The Old Mine
The old mine now stands empty
Blackened faces are long gone
No longer toiling down below
Lights pierce the darkness no more
And silence now loudly deafens
Where noise once shattered the earth
The only sound in ancient shafts and tunnels
Is the dripping of water on the rocks below
The old mine stands in silent witness
Its value torn out and carted away
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Brian Wrixon | p. 36 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
The Old House
The old house sits silently on the cobbled street
Where for centuries people have passed by
Horses, carts and tramping feet
Seen and heard from its windows
Through its doors generations have come and gone
New swaddled life carried inside with joy
And spent years taken out in mourning
Festive light have adorned it
And a black wreath had graced its door
Life goes in, life comes out, and life passes by
But the old house still sits silently on the cobbled street
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Brian Wrixon | p. 37 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Characters I Have Met
Street Art
When walking down a Cotswold street
I never knew who I would meet
An old curmudgeon on a seat
Simply resting his tired feet
When sailing down a Parisian stream
I spotted Homer, sleeping it would seem
Nodding off and in a dream
Far away from his Simpson team
When exploring gardens carefully dug
Holland petalled like a flowered rug
I met a lover giving a tree a hug
His adoring look gave my heart a tug
Farther along within the park
I met a lady with skin all dark
In contrast with the flowery park
She sat there proudly, naked and stark
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Brian Wrixon | p. 38 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Amateurs on Stage
The Boat Show
Cue lights, cue music
Eager faces turn to the stage
Let the show begin
The nightly cruise ship ritual
A bevy of hoofers in the opening act
Who this morning were cleaning cabins
The pool lifeguard is playing drums
While the daytime bartender croons a tune
The magician is the breakfast captain
And the chorus, the girls from the spa
Try to imagine the passengers' amateur hour!
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Brian Wrixon | p. 39 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Adventures on the Onaping River
The Swimming Hole
Clothes piled in heaps on the shore
Naked boys jumping into the stream
Shooting down the boiling rapids
Over scrubbed and smoothened rocks
Resting in the quiet pool below
Clambering to safety and drying in the sun
Smoke 'em if you got 'em men
Good thing girls don't know about this place
Unaware of prying eyes and giggles in the woods
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Mohan Rana | p. 40 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
White Cliffs of Chalk
White scars against the green
Evidence of a violent past
Ancient hills pushed from the sea
Chalk thrust upward to the sky
White cliffs across the channel
Born in the same upheaval
What was once the ocean floor
Is now a pleasant hilltop
A peaceful country pasture
Where the lowing of the cattle
Mingles with the songs of birds
And the buzzing of the bees -
Tranquillity born from violence
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Mohan Rana | p. 41 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 1.1 (2011): 41-8.
Web.
http://www.coldnoon.com/pdf/Coldnoon_TravelPoetics_Sep’11/MohanRana.pdf
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.
http://www.coldnoon.com/copyright/Coldnoon_TravelPoetics_Sep’11/MohanRan
a.html
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Mohan Rana | p. 42 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Mohan Rana
The Morning Post
Sand has flown from the Sahara in the night,
crossing lands and seas to fall on this city.
Or has some wind blown it from nearby fields?
For the first time I take notice of dust:
all my life I have lived without seeing
all that is ordinary, all that is
where it should be:
birds in the sky, men on land,
fish in the sea's dark depths.
Wearing a mask
made especially for this poem,
I stand with eyes open on an empty stage,
declaiming inside a glass box
my name, nickname, surname, pen-name,
address, age, birthplace, education, job.
Every day since I opened my eyes
I have done this, trembling like a broken puppet
dangling from the strings
that grow twisted as I wither too,
gasping for breath,
my next role unwritten.
The post lies on the mat,
curling at the edges, unread
every morning.
From there I move on
another passing day: hardly a glance
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Mohan Rana | p. 43 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
at the morning post my figure shadows.
The geography of near and far inside you
decides what life brings: happiness or sorrow;
time of grief, a brief moment for love.
Over and over I practise the minor rules
of punctuation: life still spent
on small distinctions. Yesterday's
unfinished business still unfinished
tomorrow. I grow old, trying to become new
by wearing another coat today.
Translated by Lucy Rosenstein and Bernard O' Donoghue
From, Subah kii Daak (in Hindi), Morning Post
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Mohan Rana | p. 44 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Fear
Ancient trees wrapped in creepers
The forest asleep in deep shade
My heart racing
My blood terror-stricken
Excited I see
The hidden faces
The falling masks
Across the filtering light
Which reaches my roots
Why did I come here
Alone
And brought the one
Who was not
Translated by Lucy Rosenstein
From, Bhay (in Hindi), Fear
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Mohan Rana | p. 45 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Did you Hear it Too?
All night long your restlessness
walked the wet streets of Lisbon,
pitter-patter.
A silent moan
woke me at daybreak.
A bird
was singing in the dawn:
something had woken it up too.
All night long your restlessness,
unable to sleep, walked and peered
with eyes closed
inside me.
A sound broke in the ocean's sigh
amidst the rising waves.
Turning over in the sheets' folds,
did you hear the bird too?
Translated by Lucy Rosenstein and Bernard O'Donoghue
From, Patthar Ho Jaayegii Nadii (in Hindi), Stone-River
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Mohan Rana | p. 46 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
The Blue-Eyed Blackbird
Is it right to speak of myself?
This will do:
I am a blue-eyed blackbird
My wings know all directions
My flight has touched the colour of the sky
When soaring aloft I've glimpsed the darkness beyond
I've tracked drying rivers and swelling deserts
I've been singed in burning forests
I've kissed anguish as it melts in the rain
I've seen a woman give birth in a tree beseiged by flood
I've changed my body so many times
and yet I am always a blue-eyed blackbird
People in flight from war, in hiding,
climbing steep slopes, stop when they see me
Stunned they are so high, so far,
even though I live in their hearts
In the deep lines of their faces
countries are shattered and rebuilt
They buy new locks, news keys to new heavens
What did Boabdil think when he handed the keys
of the Alhambra to Isabella,
whispering, 'Here are the keys to paradise'?
This endless flight with no day and no night
when the sun sets and rises at once
Longitude is locked in my eyes
Reading the diary of a poet's dreams
lost in fog, I fall
merging with the earth's dust
a blue-eyed blackbird is born again
Arrows, now guns, are aimed at me
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Mohan Rana | p. 47 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
I have no fear
My blood will mingle with the crimson of autumn
I'll take flight from another country
Another direction
Casting life from your words
I am not of this world
Is it right to speak more of myself?
This will do
Translated by Lucy Rosenstein and The Poetry Translation Workshop
From Hindi.
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Mohan Rana | p. 48 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Maze
Half-awake I drift into sleep
But thoughts keep returning
Clippings afloat in my mind
As I remember you
Sometimes smiling
Sometimes imagining
What else is possible
A busy road is there now
Hustle and bustle
But that place
Is a mere memory
Every lane takes us to that street corner
Half-awake I stretch my hand
Towards the departing dream
Somebody comes near
Walks on in the maze
Full of doubt, I am there again
Translated by Lucy Rosenstein
From, Bhul Bhulaiya (in Hindi), Maze
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Veronica Pamoukaghlian | p. 49 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Veronica Pamoukaghlian
Pamoukaghlian, Veronica. “Poems by Veronica Pamoukaghlian.” Coldnoon: Travel
Poetics 1.1 (2011): 49-56. Web.
http://www.coldnoon.com/pdf/Coldnoon_TravelPoetics_Sep’11/VeronicaPamouk
aghlian.pdf
Licensed Under:
"Poems by Veronica Pamoukaghlian" 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_Sep’11/VeronicaP
amoukaghlian.html
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Veronica Pamoukaghlian | p. 50 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Veronica Pamoukaghlian
Through Inside Passage
This land of low clouds
and scattered islands
the endless afternoons
that never pass
This land of greenest pines
and greenest seas
towards Alaska
This land of stormy days
and sunny eves
of purple sunsets
and quietness
of isolation
and patient fishermen
These waters of grand whales
and Luxus vessels
and one of them
will win the battle
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Veronica Pamoukaghlian | p. 51 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
in the end
Whale territory
that we invade
with our grand ships
and camera lenses
This land of narrow pass
that earthquakes
shall defend
This West of All
and east of all the rest
These lines of land
and labyrinths of sea
cleansed by
the truth of winds
and force of waves
Something you feel inside
when we do pass
This land of mystery
land of low clouds
and unreal fogs
the Inside Passage
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Veronica Pamoukaghlian | p. 52 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
The Uruguayan
To enter bars where everyone knows my name
Unlike the whisky go
Where waitresses
Bill the drunken at their
Leisure
And the dance floor buoys
With silicon
To see the children’s flags
Upon a soccer win
After those 50 barren years
That is the sight
Of happiness
The Uruguayan
Dressed in their autumn colours
All year long
And if they changed
To fit the fashions of the world
I wouldn’t recognize them
As my kin
The Uruguayan
Who let their princes
Die of hunger
After they hone
The most beautiful song
Mama vieja
Caracole
The love goes on
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Veronica Pamoukaghlian | p. 53 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
The Music of the Mosque
The smoke
the mosques
and the seagull flight
The tumult
of the music
of the Mosque
after the sunset
the spikes of towers
piercing the skies
of Istanbul
The heavy sounds
of prayer
and Turkish songs
from passing ferries
the cluster buildings
rising through the hills
the seagulls’ watch
over the sea
The ships are docked
nobody will go nowhere
We sit out here
to await the end of prayer
The hills are singing
and the seagulls praying
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Veronica Pamoukaghlian | p. 54 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
and the young Turks
smoke the Nargile
and rest
with their faces
that look like our faces
their voice
sounds like our voice
they are not
murderers
they are doctors
musicians and accountants
and pushy carpet salesmen
at the Bazaar
They have a face
so like our own
that betrays not
the rot
of History
Behind these mountains
was a land
my kin did
call their own
and I have seen
the skulls
set on a speer
for all to see
The skies are calm
the darkness coming
the Mosque awaits
but not for me
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Veronica Pamoukaghlian | p. 55 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
An Ordinary Day
(Written on a Plane)
Butchering
to the sound
of Frank Sinatra
The slit
throats
of Abu Ghraib
the way they hang
and slice the throats
of pigs
at slaughterhouses
and then we eat
the blood turned black
the sweet warm blood
of men
and not
of pigs
What kind of people are we
that we cannot stop this
And votes are binned
in Haiti
that´s what we think
of the decision of the people
we let it rot
the precious voice
with yesterday´s leftovers
and the rats
some dump in Port au Prince
The blood of four children
on their way to school
in Fadel, Baghdad
a quiet
neighbourhood
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Veronica Pamoukaghlian | p. 56 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
What good was it
for the mother
to scream to the winds
of the West and East
after blood was shed
and the Hope was dead
“we know nothing of politics”
“we are simple people”
“we know nothing
of politics”
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Vishesh Unni Raghunathan | p. 57 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Vishesh Unni Raghunathan
Raghunathan, Vishesh Unni. “Poems by Vishesh Unni Raghunathan.” Coldnoon:
Travel Poetics 1.1 (2013): 57-62. Web.
http://www.coldnoon.com/pdf/Coldnoon_TravelPoetics_Sep’11/VisheshUnniRag
hunathan.pdf
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Vishesh Unni Raghunathan | p. 58 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Vishesh Unni Raghunathan
I Stood Still
I pick up the broken sticks and lay them straight.
I rearrange them in a square, as a kite, as a diamond.
I pick up grains of sand as my wet feet dry,
they hold tales long forgotten by man or any other.
I pick up the loose threads thrown away,
They talk of clothes they were made to be.
I pick up the broken glass with dried blood-
I see that violence that shattered it.
I pick up the wax from a burnt out candle-
It feels cold and waits for a day to melt away.
I pick up a torn piece of paper,
It had someone's will scribbled.
I caught a rain drop from a little cloud,
It talked about lands unknown.
I picked up an ant, it tried to run away,
I held it; It bit me and in a fury, I almost crushed it.
I caught a butterfly, it stood still.
We saw each other and I let it flutter away.
I stood still.
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Vishesh Unni Raghunathan | p. 59 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Breathless
Breathless.
The traffic crawls through another signal,
A medley of horns thaws imagination.
The dread- of having to keep it moving,
To not let go and hold on to the break, tight.
A symposium of everything that keeps it alive-
The world and whatever else there is.
Neon lights, archways of a sojourn and
Bridges that lead into junctions- all a pointless perjury.
The city pants, overgrow and made up-
Its blood cells are all almost dead.
It waits, for the impending strife,
A disaster to relieve it of this painful existence.
Somewhere, the end waits berthed,
Harbouring the inevitable, relishing the prospects.
The city, it waits-
Almost breathless now.
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Vishesh Unni Raghunathan | p. 60 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
The City
New roads that lead to old places-
Neat, well laid and painted.
The old is buried and razed,
Even as the stray dogs stay.
Parks of composure, offering a breather-
Yet bridges break away the trees of a hot summer.
Tall buildings with cemented wishes,
They sprout like petty street temples.
The drudgery- the laconic movement of wheels,
The cacophony of hoking and the clean white shirts.
Hoarder of hope, the city refuses to unwind-
Lest success be seen as nothing but a distant skyscraper.
Some offer a prayer, others take a spanner,
All hoping to mend the potholed roads.
In the end, the burgeoning beast spread is limbs,
Stepping on open lands and skies, who is to offer a third?
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Vishesh Unni Raghunathan | p. 61 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
The Rigidity
The rigidity-
The parallel lines, that run along,
Being chased by the glazing heat
And oblique rays of the unforgiving sun.
I want to stay still,
So that this solitude feels alone,
In the midst of a throng,
Wave upon wave,
With black umbrellas and
Colourful innocuous fabric.
I want to feel happy,
Because there is no reason to feel sad-
I may never belong in the sediment-hopes
Of a second class compartment,
But I can still stand and feel
The hope and despondence,
Resonating through pirated cell phones,
Cloth bags, pink cotton shirts and flip flops.
I want to know,
Then maybe I won't be afraid-
The reason for the closed doors,
Black veils and buttons on shirts,
That sickening stench and the dry
Skies, all waiting for some repose.
These two parallel lines,
That carry away all that can be,
That usher into the city,
The best of the seeds,
Where they are fed to become weeds.
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Vishesh Unni Raghunathan | p. 62 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
The compartments rattle away,
Feeding on the dreams of another yesterday.
Rupee coins and thoughtless gazes,
Judgmental by instinct, yet really afraid-
No one dares to give change.
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p. 63 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. 64 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
Editor of Le Zaporogue Journal (pub. In French & English)
Aarhus University, Denmark
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