Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (September '11)

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: TRAVEL POETICS

(INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING)

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.

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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.

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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.

http://www.coldnoon.com/pdf/Coldnoon_TravelPoetics_Sep’11/Editorial.pdf

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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.

http://www.coldnoon.com/pdf/Coldnoon_TravelPoetics_Sep’11/ArunimaSen.pdf

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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.

http://www.coldnoon.com/pdf/Coldnoon_TravelPoetics_Sep’11/ArupKChatterjee

.pdf

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tterjee.html



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.

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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


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



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





i have an old mother : he said

she will die

and i will cry


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



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




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.

http://www.coldnoon.com/pdf/Coldnoon_TravelPoetics_Sep’11/BrianWrixon.pdf

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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.

http://www.coldnoon.com/pdf/Coldnoon_TravelPoetics_Sep’11/MohanRana.pdf

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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)


Pamoukaghlian, Veronica. “Poems by Veronica Pamoukaghlian.” Coldnoon: Travel

Poetics 1.1 (2011): 49-56. Web.

http://www.coldnoon.com/pdf/Coldnoon_TravelPoetics_Sep’11/VeronicaPamouk

aghlian.pdf

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http://www.coldnoon.com/copyright/Coldnoon_TravelPoetics_Sep’11/VeronicaP

amoukaghlian.html




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)


Raghunathan, Vishesh Unni. “Poems by Vishesh Unni Raghunathan.” Coldnoon:

Travel Poetics 1.1 (2013): 57-62. Web.

http://www.coldnoon.com/pdf/Coldnoon_TravelPoetics_Sep’11/VisheshUnniRag

hunathan.pdf

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a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.


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niRaghunathan.html




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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