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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 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. 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.



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.



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”).



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.


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. 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.



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



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.


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. 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.



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.



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.



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.



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.



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.


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. 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.



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. ____________



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



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.



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



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?



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



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.



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.



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”



Perhaps it snowed in the nearby hills And near my door, I met with the rains.


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. 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.



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



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



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



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



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



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.



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



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.


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. 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.



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



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



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



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!



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


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



Mohan Rana Rana, Mohan. “Poems by Mohan Rana.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.1 (2011): 41-8. 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.



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



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



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



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



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



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.



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


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. 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.



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



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



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



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



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



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



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”


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. Licensed Under:

"Poems by Vishesh Unni Raghunathan" 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.



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.



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.



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?



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.



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.


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



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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