Sunday 26 December 2010

Two poems

As a belated effort to make up the lack of original creative (as opposed to critical) effort on this blog, and as a small tribute on his 150th anniversary to the unprecedented creativity of Rabindranath Tagore, here are two poems inspired more or less directly by the phenomenon of Tagore's music, Rabindrasangit. The first poem is mine, written from various experiences in Santiniketan. The second was written by my father following the first time I played him a recording of Tagore singing his own songs (which you can find here).

Night Music

A single candle. Over the board
And tea-shop bench where conversation roared,
Now silently they'll sit; one girl
Alone among them will uncurl
A melody from the Poet's word.
A friend once carefully sang it for me,
This raga, old Tansen's Darbari,
Said, the true note is not to be found
Immediately - it cannot be bound
In place (like your crude pitches); only
Through seeking, grasping towards a love
Imagined: that way your voice must move.
And so hers does. In that dark air
Above a hand is passing - there
It reaches for what alone could soothe:
Touch from some being more than man.
I pause in the blacked-out street. You can
Just catch, far off, the answering tone
Of a flute that breathes its tune alone
From a rickshaw-puller's practised hand.

In the city of light how will we learn
Music like this? Song to return
Us to the dark where we belong,
Where we are headed, no longer strong
In words and company. If we yearn
For truth, we'd take simplicity
Into ourselves again. A country
Without fear of emptiness or night
Sings a music that rests light
Upon the earth, watching the sky.

On Hearing the Voice of Tagore

Out of its box the voice came
crackling over time's
deserts and seas
forests fields
cities and villages
fragile with age
yet against it persisting
and still renewing
the project of the caves
that are for ever resounding

As we sat we listened

And as we sat my mind began to walk

over ground of baked and powdery soil
the colour of cinnabar between pale grasses
I heard the low conversation of trees
and the humming of the mid-day sun
Between the shadow and the light
I walked and paused and walked again
I stopped resumed walked on
A little breeze rustled the leaves
with syllables that turned and turned
becoming a voice like the voice of the wind
which entering through the ears
becomes the voice of the mind

The thread of syllables
was the thread of a song
whose words had no separate meaning
I followed the flow and it drew me on
to wherever it would lead me
a source a throat a spring
out of the dry earth
The voice I heard
seemed no louder for being nearer now
only stronger when it rose to meet the need to be
then sank away
communing with itself

At length I stood behind a peepul tree
and saw not far ahead
an old man sat beneath another
whom I would creep no further to disturb
I spoke under my breath
Let his tree be his tree
Mine was the watching and the listening post
Peeping I could see
his limbs like roots
his beard a flowing growth
White robes white as light
would be as soft and seamless to the touch
He sang with no accompaniment
but whispering grass
insects twirling leaves and particles of dust

I thought of another
a fellow poet and a distant friend
who sang the Song of the Self to the Soul
and of the Soul to the Self
Each in turn takes the lover's part
and sings to the other
all that troubles and all that delights
Yet the other is within and not sitting beside
and the one is hidden
behind the lips that move
and the eyes that close
only to open inside a head and a body
like the body of an ancient tree
whose sap is rising falling
quavering and gathering strength
as the limbs of his body stay where they are
Only the song can interrupt the singing
Only the wind knows when to blow in the branches

I know a shy yet faithful bird
It hides with wings folded
till out of a tangled bush it flies up
a song bird
free into the blue and open sky
There it can sail and hover
swoop and rise
And there on currents of the moment improvise
and shape it all at will
for no applause of angels or of acolytes

So earth in seeking air
becomes a strain of melody
that sun and shadow modulate
as joy does sorrow
consolation pain
fulfilment yearning
What need for other instruments?
The voice projects beyond its time
and like a bridge or hammock it connects
two trees two continents

There he sat
And here I sit

And when it ceased I found
I was returned as gently as from a dream
to where I sat with you
and where I now remember it
in a room stacked deep with images
of ancient art still young
as all unsmothered song.