(Variations in Faulkner)
Because of the explicit pathos borne by the title, it took me a while to pick up 'As I lay dying', authored by William Faulkner. Termed as a 'dark comedy' in the literary circles, Faulkner claimed to have completed the novel within a week, invoking the Muse only during the nocturnal hours.
Personally, the book spoke to me at various levels...its simple lyricism, wound gently around the tragic theme, imparted unto me the kind of satisfaction derived primarily from visual arts. Interacting with its characters as individuals with their own unique voice helped me better identify with the austere loneliness they found themselves besieged by, and come to terms with my own as an implicit part of life.
The constant sense of collision between natural elements and the characters in the book, juxtaposed with brilliant flashes of fusion between the two worlds, is what gives the story its movement, and that's what impelled me to write the following poems. Sentences like, "It is dark. I can hear wood, silence. I know them" spoke to me more intimately than any other from a thousand others I must have read in various other books. Phrases like, 'for a smouldering while' ignited in me the desire to be part of that 'smouldering while'...part of that one burning instant, demanding a pause from the compulsive pace of life.
1.
I need a fragment of
unscarred space to
unload myself: empty
myself as in the last bit
of the deep interior
of a burrowing
mollusk shell...empty
like my grandma's eyes
when she breathed her
last: leaving nothing
behind, taking nothing
with her; empty like the
full-moon night
without its army of
stars, and beheaded
of its twirling
darkness; empty like the
narrow silent road that
wheels on across
blistered
summer plains...
For a smouldering while
allow me to unload myself
and lie down
2.
Come and deliver me
from the carcasses
of yesteryears
full of sand and
echoes of shells
'cross rub-al-khalis;
empty me out
like the wave
that comes rushing
hurling itself
against the rock:
sinking its burden
of infinite distances
into the calcite pores.
3.
what is this life
charred by inexplicable
hunger and yearnings
marred by the whirring
of rusting years piled
one upon another...?
with the albatross hung
around the neck, it labours
on to find redemption
in a signboard announcing
'Hope: 3 miles', and in the
blabber of a child who
believes his mother
is a fish, in the old
man who sets out on a
quest to find himself
a fresh set of dentures;
and in the youth who
blurring the line
between life and
death, rides away
to follow the ruins
of the setting sun
4. (Addie and Cash: Mother & son)
In silence he works,
his adze agleam
with afternoon sweat
of the hitting sun
as he hews a coffin
for his sick mother.
she watches him
from the bed: intent
putting the finishing touches
on the box which would
carry her cadaver;
her own son.
the day shuts down
watching the summer
quiet, fettered to
the sound of an adze
going, "chuck
chuck, chuck..."
5. (Dewey Dell and Lafe: lovers)
their eyes
briefly meeting
drowning
the need for words,
hand touching hand,
trembling with
the thought
of promises made,
cotton fluffs
filling up their
sacks, the gold
of the tumbling sun
rolling across
the fields, stoking
desires
6. (Darl: the second son)
He is the
knower
He doesn't
need nothing to
say. He stands
there
and looks.
the emptiness
of his eyes
is filled with
knowing
when he speaks,
it is with a look
hazy and intense
floating and sunk,
like a bird
wading
across the skies
7.
Quick and fast
sky, creaking under
the weight
of cotton clouds
finally cracked open.
Oppressed wind
escaped, hissing and
wooshing, freeing
itself from the
preying fingers of
elms and oaks,
pursued by
slashing rains it
hid in the
warm darkness
between the gorging
udders of the
lowing cow
and soft earth.
8.
The hill goes off
into the sky,
the sun comes up
from behind.
Hushed sound of
slow footsteps
smudge the shining
patches smeared
onto the rain-soaked
road.
The mourners
trudge on in
silence; the wagon
hauling the
coffin groans.
Above the
buzzards circle:
expectant, intent and
hungry.
9.
They have returned me
to myself now,
those impossible yearnings
inexplicable and uncontrolled
strangling my being into
obscure wakefulness:
lo, how hurriedly they depart
these enchantresses,
Sirens from Anthemusa
hurling me back to
my own desolate shores
ringed by fiery nights
and ashen days
It’s smouldering all right. Some of the lines stay with you, others get buried as I hurry onto the next. Feeling-fully penned, and as always with the depth I’ve now gotten accustomed to from you Seema.
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