BOMBAY RISING: A Cartographer's Dream
From Vitasta's Workshop
Dated: Late September
Time: irrelevant
Notes: Published in Emanations: When a Planet was a Planet.
I.
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war! – Kubla Khan, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Bombay Rising
What is your history silly poet, what is that deafening sound?
Did the mountains shriek, did the gorges erupt in blinding light?
And
did you bereft of sense, immolate your natural monsters?
Do
you dream still, in cavernous slumbers, of wandering and collapses,
Cozy
on fairy grass, under skies scintillating with artillery guns firing?
Do
you circle still in the sky searching for meat buried in the ground?
The
saffron came from Iran, I know, and the opium red from Kabul,
What
exists of my home, the wood, the dirt, specks of shimmering mica?
Perhaps
the drifters with their goat-herds planted the first Bouin trees,
And
named every shade of beige; khaki brown, fawn, earthen clay.
Our existence of
pastel chalk dissolves like salt in the lost Tethys Ocean,
Our deities of
wind and wheat chaff return to fissures of mud.
Who grieves for
you in silent exile poet? Who murmurs through fractured hills?
Across the
wilderness the echoes of hooves drum on, and military mules
Huddle together
for warmth in descending gloom, picking on shahtoot,
Spitting lilacs in
the sky, and in crevices underneath, the crystalline waters
Of once holy
rivulets is bottled for dawn delivery along with herbs and wool.
The weeping virs archive the memoirs of Kashmir, my fatherland.
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| (c) Vitasta Raina, 2021 |
A Cartographer's Dream
An
ancient trade route protrudes
Between
beaten fields of jowar
And
the forgotten schools of Hindustan.
Cultivated,
renovated, through cities and at ends,
Such
rivers, such roads, a thousand ghats!
My
own hands tremble, the parrot echoes fate,
My own hands, the fault lines of my ambitious future.
I
met a palmist once, in Varanasi, saffron and divine,
And
individual in an individuated street,
A
hand without a wrist, a soul without reflection.
North
and East; Earth, Wind and Fire…
What
was left of my skin and short temper,
Of
my tongue and my storm daemons?
The
sacred geometry of my fingerprints
Is
left imprinted on red stone walls.
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| (c) Vitasta Raina, 2021 |
III.
The city never sleeps, full of villains and creeps, that's where I learned to do my hustle had to scuffle with freaks! – N.Y. State of Mind, Nas
Well
I stumbled down the stairs, my beaker filled with ice,
I
hear that sparrows don’t roost on the same rafters twice,
And
I hear merchants playing flutes in the narrow streets between,
BBD
chawls, wrapped in Hare Rama shawls, sporting
cotton jeans,
Speaking
of the wondrous mystique of Himalayan sea buckthorn oil,
Good
for your weak knees and weak toes and weak aureoles.
“Buy one”, they urge, “Get one Free!”
And
on every billboard in the city of dreams, leading actors gleam,
And
a girl from Greece tells me to search for inner peace,
“Try
Yoga”, she says, “and look for your Angel Number in shooting stars”
Darling,
it’s 3 a.m. on a Bandra night, we’re drunk at Monkey Bar.
And
I’m searching for a face, I think I met him a thousand year ago,
But
I must’ve given him wrong directions, who can tell, who knows?
“Look up”, she says, “That’s Thirty Three!”
Now
we pick up our maxi-scooters and ride out at witching-hour,
Looking
for tea and cigarettes and cream-rolls and whiskey sour.
And
all around us yowl the sirens of ambulances and cops
The
only good thing about Bombay is that the beat never drops.
And
now we age in our daze, in our holes, in our caves,
In
our inheritance of Goan dives, and in our liquid graves.
“IMFL!” he said, “Indian-Made foreign liquor”.
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| (c) Vitasta Raina, 2021 |
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