Lockdown

-          Manprasad Subba

Hadn’t been accustomed to the word lockdown,

that sounds burdensome and makes us frown.

I am rather familiar with the word lock-up;   

have seen innocents also falsely locked up.

On some occasions I, too, nearly landed in the lock-up,

but for a leader’s favours the matters were hushed up. 

The smart guy’s allegiance to the party in power

made all in the locality astonishingly cower. 

But it’s the phrase ‘lock-out’ that is too insolent

standing akimbo in the way of the innocents.  

On seeing this, the tea-bushes turn stupefied

and all the trails across the garden go to hide.   

Only a giant Lock with cold indifference hangs

from the nose of factory gate that’s deaf to pangs.

The factory wears the look of a closed museum.

The manager’s bungalow keeps deafening mum.

Mute goes the powerful vocal cords of the siren    

and the garden with all its greenness looks barren.  

And the green-gold workers, without the siren’s whine,

are suddenly overwhelmed by the super-surplus time.

Then the poor folks are at their wit’s end

knowing nothing at all how to spend

such an overwhelming wealth of time

beneath which quietly they lie supine.    

They are haunted by the ghost of the Lock

that defies being exorcised by the endless talk.

This recurs every year when dry season is near.

Yet to them these tea-bushes are truly so dear.  

(But why should these lines play such a rhyme

while telling about their too harsh a time?

 But what if rhyme forms on its own accord

and the footfalls of rhythm want to be heard?)

   

And now this ‘Lockdown,’ so unfamiliar a word,

has come to distance individuals from the herd.

Unlike the notorious lock-up or lock-out 

this Lockdown swells with the stories of doubt.

But Lockdown is the only, only weapon left

with human beings who’re now suddenly bereft

of their craft, cleverness and super intelligence

and they’re now piteously pushed to the fence.   

----------------------------------------------------

May 02,  2020.

 

  

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   

An Unwritten Poem  

-         Manprasad Subba

You ask me to write a poem for you

when all the words are dissociated from one another

and each of them has gone into isolation

Not a line takes form and I am utterly out of wit

The words that busily walked along the streets and lanes,

the words that commuted in buses and trains,

buzzed in and around the markets and shopping malls,

sometimes took to the streets in protests,

have now gone quietly into their dungeons

The words that sweated for their daily wages

the words that the parks and beaches teemed with

the words I was one with since time immemorial

are today quarantined in their individual cages

Now, how can I string lines with those words

That would convey my intimate feelings?

At this age of intricate interdependence

these poor words have been cruelly separated,

not like the islands that are constantly caressed by the hands

of murmuring sea-waves from the other shores

But these words are rendered lonely islands

with voids in between them

and light-years away from each other

utterly deprived of warm touch

How can a poem be born in such a lifeless void?

The Facebook wall invites, too, to write something

when each of the words is mercilessly exiled in distant isolation

In fact, I want to write poem

not only in the language you and I understand

but also in Chinese, Italian, Persian,

Spanish, German, French and many others…

But wherever I turn to I see the words quarantined

with lower half of their faces hidden in masks

So, my Love,

please, accept this blank sheet of paper

and feel upon it the heartbeat of a poem left unwritten

Or, stare with your eyes closed

at the blank screen of my Facebook wall

which is but the dark blank space

left by those poor departed souls

*********************************************

[Dedicated to those who succumbed to Covid-19 and also to those suffering from the same dreaded pandemic]  

  

O Syria!

-         Manprasad Subba

Many nights have passed

Since Syria has not been able to sleep a wink in my eyes

Many days have passed

Since Syria, fallen unconscious,

Has not been able to wake up in my eyes

O friend! Do not ask about the map of Syria

Battered and bleeding face of any child

Is what they call Syria

The earth bleeds

And the blood flows upon blood

Even the Mediterranean Sea cannot wash them away.

There you can see the map of Syria.

Having lost the leg of a tottering baby,

The highway has lost its journey.

Having lost an arm of a baby,

The breeze has lost its sense of touch.

The smiling eyes of the sun

Hit by the splinter of bomb

Are suddenly swollen shut

And dreams have fled

The sky is swallowed by the billowing arsenic smoke

And all the beauties have vanished

Syria is screaming  

From beneath the earth

Buried under the debris of crumbled time

O Seat of power! O Superpower!

How many thousands of ears do you need

To hear this scream?

Which latest model of binocular do you need

To see this face of Syria?

O Seat of power that breathes chemical breath,

How many millions of lungs do you want?

O Superpower that laughs hatching on the bombs,

How many millions

Of baby futures do you want?

O Picasso!

I see you writhing in your tomb

To paint another Guernica,

The twenty-first century Guernica on the canvas of Syria!

Syria is the name of my mother,

My elder sister, my younger sister and my daughter

Syria is the name of my father,

My elder brother, my younger brother and my son

It’s also my own name!

But at this moment, O Syria!

I can do nothing

But to sit in a distant corner

And shed these words from my eyes      

O Commanders of creeds!

Dip your tongues in the ponds of innocent bloods

And let your tongues know the taste of innocence

Those tongues would speak of paradise

But this piece of earth has turned into hell

Where the innocent souls have been dumped

O God!

Why are you so eerily mute?

We are waiting for your voice from heaven…

But how long will it be before you speak?

A Few Love Poems

This Aching Joy

Ah!

Why is this pain so sweet?

Or am I already turned into a masochist

unawares?

At this moment,

bearing on the shoulders

all the suffering of the world

I am willing to walk uphill to Calvary.

Oh!

Can a joy be so painful?

I am no longer contained in my own self.

O Eyes in search of happiness!

Come to me –

I will give you the diamond beads of tears

blended with my smile.

Ragini,

shall I take them all into my embrace

and reveal the mystery of this aching joy?

Riddled

What is it that I’m possessed by?

At one moment,

I see myself in the gloomy silence

Of a guilty face;

Next moment in elation

I go dancing green leaves on the trees.

Sometimes I am gripped by the graveness

That fills the hall of a condolence meeting.

Sometimes like a fine morning horizon

I keep smiling.

What’s wrong with me?

Now I feel my breath

Choked in my throat,

Now I feel tickled

And released in peals of laughter.

Sometimes I go shrinking in embarrassment,

Sometimes riding on the wings of ecstatic wind

I go around humming a new tune.

o

As you fingered...

As you fingered the earth of my body

a sensation sprouted on it,

started growing quietly

covering the entire field

with its tickling vines

and smooth shiny leaves

while sending roots deep down

into my heart

that throbs whispering – love… love… love…

Walking along the Road

1.

That day

we walked along the ancient road,

as ancient as primeval human emotions

or as the beginning of civilization.

But I was unknowingly overwhelmed

by the fresh smell of stones and earth

as if they were just turned up

as in some road being newly constructed.

Did you not feel so, dear?

2.

Like the spades

digging soft earth rhythmically

our footsteps were falling on the ground,

and standing on the edge of the road,

we scanned the distant hills

and valleys thousands of years old

which but appeared to me

like some exotic land

newly discovered by the Columbus of my eyes.

Did you not feel so, my Love?

o

Those Moments at a Roadside

Seated at the edge of time,

whatever we spoke to each other

was not a talk

between mythical Madhu and Malati.

The words we uttered

were the moments we lived together.

We are very much here,

just like the grass

grown in the crevices of rocks.

Even when someone

sees in them nothing but illusion

how can those moments we lived be any different?

How can the truth we envisioned in them

be replaced?

*

Our unrestrained laughter then

was not for some toothpaste advertisement.

The words we spoke to each other

were not rehearsed for a theatrical play.

With the moments emancipated

from the circumference of a clock

I was far away

from the bazaar of consumerism,

escaped also from the bounds of pragmatism.

I am talking of the trust and confidence

we lived in those moments.

I am afraid

these words may sound absurd to you now!

o

Madhu and Malati: Protagonists of an old popular romantic fantasy.

Disarmed

No, I knew not at all

that I would ever go baring myself

in front of you in this manner

I know not

when I,

one after another,

put off my honour and dignity

and laid them at your feet

Even the Karna-kavach of my self-respect

I have torn off my chest

and handed it to you, smiling

Now I am so disarmed

a prod with your little finger is enough

to make me bleed

o

The Love We Lived

Now, there’s no longer the pain

I had suffered from that wound.

There’s only a fossil of that pain.

Anything can be done with this fossil.

It can even be played like a toy.

Rest assured.

There was a time

when we were in love. Weren’t we?

During that tiny fragment of time

we were lovers.

But falling from the edge of our eyes

to the ground of transience,

that fragment of time disappeared.

Now, I realize –

what happened then had to happen that way.

You dared to throw away

the usualness of everyday affairs 

together with your broken-heeled sandals.

Nowadays,

I too feel like laughing

at the foolish dream

that it would last for all time. 

We rather live many a usualness –

fragment / frag / ment / of usu/ al/ ness/ es!

The moment of love we lived as one

is a truth that lives eternally in our memory.

But our promises were dreams

we saw in our deep sleep.

A moment was there in which

you and I were one single embrace.

On the muddy path of uncertainty

I go stepping on the stones of moments.

I live moment.

Moment!