To My Friends Far and Near

-         Manprasad Subba

Hello Tolang didi, are you still in Wuhan?

I believe you’ve survived the most dreaded virus

as you did the trauma of deportation

from this side of the Himalaya over to the Great Wall.

(That was but when you were in your early teens.)

The virus that sneaks through the ancient Wall

and strides all the mountains and the oceans on this planet

says nothing about your innocence traumatized during the war.

But my memory of you is greater than the war and this pandemic.

*

Dear Norbert,

you must be safe in the isolation ward of your own art-studio,

depicting in somber colour the monstrosity

of Corona on the canvas of your widening forehead.

Is your present home Madrid any safer than your native Munich?

The pain of mighty Spain is heard so loud everywhere.

I wonder how those street artists are doing under lockdown.

I miss your letters that would smell the blended breath of German and Spanish.

*

Alberto,

I haven’t heard of you since the pandemic outbreak in Italy.

You recently owned a home in the outskirts of Rome.

But all I am concerned about is your well being.

I imagine you looking out of your dormer window

down on the street lined with hundreds of coffins

Well, you have the formidable hope of redemption in Pope.

But the moment you wake up, pray to yourself in isolation.

*            

Dr. Rowland, my poet friend,

you, who keep shuttling between Ireland and Australia,    

haven’t responded my e-mail I wrote last evening

and your silence gives me eerie feelings.

Are you okay? Where are you now?

In Ireland? In Australia?

Or in Istanbul where Turkish translation of your poetry book

was supposed to be launched?

But the ubiquitous virus is everywhere every time in wait

If only the mantra of poetry could ward it off!

If only the music could charm it into an eternal slumber!

*

Alex, you must have slipped into isolation of your own cosy Sonnetina.

Your Infinite City, with one hundred small cottages of Sonnetinas,

is far safer than the cities of Sidney, Melbourne, Brisbane  

When everything appears to be extremely finite

I take refuge in your beautiful Infinite City.

*

Hi Bharati Gautamjee, Govardhan bhai, Hari Adhikarijee,

I hear the loud bubbling of the great melting pot of America

Alarming is the sound from across the Atlantic and Arabian Sea

So vibrant you all were a couple of weeks ago

Now your vibrancy is quarantined in each concrete pigeon-hole

O Mr. President!

Befuddle the Virus in the labyrinth of your words

so that it die of fatigue.

O my Dears! Stay safe, stay safe, stay safe.

*

And you, Remy and Bhushan,

just a few hours’ drive from my isolation centre,

but the distance all the while distancing from itself,

distancing endlessly…  

And we were denied even our humble wish

To pay our last respect to Purnima ma’am who expired last week.

*

And Sudesh, Diksha and many others like you

now laid off in some corners of Bengalore, Mumbai, Delhi…

hanging Trishanku in the space,

paper kites stuck on the microwave towers,

I’m sorely worried about you all

But we are in war

and in war and love everything is fair…

Take care of yourselves is all I can say at the moment.  

_______________________________________

-         April the 14^th, 2020.

[Infinite City is the collection of 100 sonnetinas by Alex Skovron,  a Melbourne based Australian poet.

Sonnetina is 10-line experimental form of sonnet propounded by Skovron.]

Notes on the names or the characters used in the poem “To My Friends Far and Near”:

1.        Tolaang : The name of a Chinese girl, then living at Pulbazar, Darjeeling, who along with her parents, was deported to China in the wake of the Indo-China war in 1962.

2.        Norbert : Full name Norbert Ostendorf, a German painter, later migrated to Spain making Madrid his permanent home, is a friend of mine. We used to correspond to each other for many years, but later working as a German tutor to the Spanish students, he gradually lost his ability to express in English, and the correspondence between us stopped altogether.

3.        Alberto : An imaginary name for an Italian character.

4.        Dr. Rowland : Full name Dr. Robyn Rowland, a poet who divides her time between Ireland and Australia, a friend of mine since 2010 when we met in the World Poetry Festival, Calcutta.

5.        Alex : Full name Alex Skovron, a well-known Australian poet, a friend of mine since 2010. His book Infinite City, mentioned twice in the poem, is a collection of his 100 sonnetinas. Sonnetina is a 10-line shortened form of sonnet, an experiment by Alex.

6.        Bharati Gautam, Goberdhan (Puja), Hari Adhikari are well known literary persons from Nepal, now based in America.

7.        Mr. President is obviously the present President of the USA.

8.        Remy and Bhushan do represent some of my young close friends in the plains down south of the Darjeeling Hills. .

9.        Purnima Ma’am : Mrs. Purnima Pradhan, wife of Dr. Kumar Pradhan, a noted historian and critic. She passed away a week after the lockdown was enforced nationwide to contain the deadly virus .

       10.  Sudesh, Diksha are imaginary names representing those migrant workers from the Darjeeling Hills