partial housekeeping

http://almostisland.com/winter_2011/poetry/pdfs/in_the_dark.pdf

http://almostisland.com/winter_2011/poetry/pdfs/brahmarakshas.pdf

(the above 2 are translations 2 poems of the hindi poet muktibodh)

http://almostisland.com/winter_2012/special_issue_style/pdfs/the_shape_of_a_scar.pdf

(this is an article on a strand of style in hindi literature)

http://www.biblio-india.org/adsrch.asp?mp=

(this is a review of new hindi poetry)

http://www.thebookreviewindia.org/articles.php?art=archives-757/2012/february/2

http://www.thebookreviewindia.org/articles.php?art=archives-795/2012/march/3

(of the above 2 reviews, one is on some issues of marxian historiography, and the other on issues in the anthropology of muslims)

http://www.esocialsciences.org/Articles/ShowArticle.aspx?acat=eSSays&aid=4553

(an article on savarkar)

http://www.esocialsciences.org/Articles/showArticle.aspx?acat=Book+Reviews&aid=4366

http://www.esocialsciences.org/Articles/showArticle.aspx?acat=Book+Reviews&aid=4600

(the above 2 are reviews on issues relating to speaking intimately of gandhi; and the other of a history of the rss)

the dark pulse of incessant rain in granma's forestveined fore-
head, luminous lines of face-script, with-
out-breath, death-earthworm wriggled facebook, the
the the the she hates all the men her brothers husbands in-law cousins
upper & middle communits & congress
men, those fractious, factional ghosts with their idolatorous
unbreathing stonystoned gods,
for her she preferred those skull-gardened tongue-faced ones
but it is the men who end up stories--a dead policemean
by accident betel-or bloodied-mouthed, & on this side
more dead sisters,(too many unknown malnourished writers in the family),
a malayali medium's susurrant kunjikuttan in the village square
a 70s postmaoist suicide in a lockup, here advancing on the black page wrecking
mother's tongues granma a strand of stomach between the palewhite
blouse & petticoat has the head of a toothless monkey but with gums of gold
who caterwauls of the dark pulse of incessant rain in

ghazal

This is the end of love the last star in the final sky’s crushed and scabbed rhythms
The nightingale’s claw tears the rose-lip to a night-stabbing rain’s chanted rhythms.

It will sing through its’ flesh’s surcease till only the spread-eagled voice remains
And song breaks apart free at last of the wilderness of the throats’ coiled rhythms.

No pieties for separation can hope to assuage this shame’s spent and infertile soil
What was fervent once is now only the serrate reverberation of unrequited rhythms.

The nightingale springs out of infinity’s manuscript to decree its calligraphic truth
The rose of beauty slouches petals plucked as if to a dervish’s maddened rhythms.

There they lie arranged at last the nightingale’s beak and claw the rose’s nether-lip
To another world’s eye this patterned ruin is but a dance of hologrammed rhythms.

founder of the lineage a great magic iron bird


you see the bird laid 5 eggs & from each

5 ancients. generations later our master


(& then many other masters a self-distinguishing lineage)


as abbot he studied again-again the oldly forgot native religion


he changed the practice he took a wife. one day


his master said you are equal to my actualization go deeper still

go to nepal, where 1101 yogis still practice in the opened valley

(a fabulism of monkish giggle midst the veil on veil of mist)



all these teachers & their foreheads. after labor

through the ranks he returned ripe


transmitten with the sated karma, mining bodies


within bodies, sibi's dove within the lacquered flesh


root and router bodies- yet-


all this true enlightenment so few students.


he said i am nobody i just do my best make

your mind soft soap nothing sticks a spider in a cake

consider afflictions slowly. him asleep was clear light within.



for nine generations whispered shames

of extinguishement. (failed & dazzled by his failing). but


at the end a refined text-egg & another iron bird


a chanted unrhymed repetition a new order in baked souls

the cargo boat, ceylon, mozambique, the ocean's prisons.time's conch outstares,

involves




once again the featureless filament of the wooden minute


clock hands unheave the lair


(these stranded sailors laugh for the strangest reasons)


at the third floor window he leans on the balcony


hermetic becomes his rage. he only whistles never speaks.






a librarian in a city that does not exist. catalogues doze.




the pruned heart's oppressiveness premonitions no reconstitution only there is the




'mangled bicycle, the lizard's cold & crisscrossed belly'

riviera in the mind

the villas close as it turns warm.

the air is dry but is cool in the evening

and the water, amethyst


a tiny beach covered in seaweed four-feet thick


this is where she wanted to be

but could never return to / even / in memory

soul- flickering, white smoke, fragrance

or tremulous transparent sphere etc


(no, too ethereal, - too blunt an image).


imagine instead a plant within, hardy yet


to grow it needs the sunlight of your laughter


and equally: the water of your tears.

the last man on earth raised his hand and held out a flower.


he gazed up at the skyscrapers uninhabited for so long. then at the sky.


it was the millennial anniversary of the dying of the sun.


the stars came closer.


they said they were tired of having to be still so long.


they told him it would be a relief when he too left.

she felt the blood run
in the boar's head

sitting on the mud floor.
the others in the classroom
on chairs: the taga teacher
droning

she imagined: a blood-red blow
a final vivid death-rattle-reality

the severed head rolled away


she covered the bloodied hair with hay & burnt it.

organs in a soup. her head and palms cold.

The Holloway Series In Poetry - A.B. Spellman

another berkeley sunset

a flower by any other name...-


but, under-lit


by a setting sun


suspended in transparence


(not a color, not a detail, barely a glaze)


bitumen in lavender


the shape and lucency of urchins in flight


(the sky an upturned pot


holding a film of deep underwater)



-facing up diving downward


balancing in a reverie of patterned form.


in a minute the set sun will snap the image


and fold memory within
the eye's upturned palm-

itsn't only the painter

who lives on his fingertips

his heart a madder root



and swims from one descended image-mountain to another

scripts in water

imperceptum. inapparence. presence-



does not

apply it's self or optimize


is not persuasive


is equal to contradiction


lies undefended



plays with all cards open all eyes shut


lies likely unestablished.






an ocean opens in memory,


the brain a single thorn
weaving blood

the rain like a release of arrows

the earth like a bloodstained mace

smeared with grass and marrow.

the deer sacrificial. the hunter allegorical.

of constellations chasing constellations.

a tortoise the still soul of a churning ocean.

lectio difficilior.

the warrior shines in his wound

the single bullet revealing an opened red

the rod in his mouth a sun destroying the universe.

the river is a sister of the time of death

carrying away timid warriors to the town

of the king of the dead surrounded by kings

of the dead. the ghosts make wailing sounds.


the hour is the fire taken from the recitation

"as fire is covered by smoke so knowledge is covered with desire" Mbh

the rising son is an especial splendor


cloud and ocean cloud and ocean in lock


a blind man reads the late afternoon light
watches conch shells under water and later
the 16 crescent shaped parts of the moon.


a pilgrimage underwater under moonlight with the night
shining on the rising
moon a crescent on a forehead


the universe roams in all directions with flaming unibrow.

lotus metaphors

lotus charms as that of palms placed together

the red of nail and finger, the shape.

the red flowered lotus is not the dark blue flower.


filaments are lumen which the lotus eye perceives

& the crease of the garment is the interior distress

as one plucked from water, drooping


fragrant, exhalation as of a child's palm-clap


or: a lopped head, or the tip of a tusk, or spear


traveling from one war to another


its sharpness quick growing as lotus in new distant waters.


though the leaf repels, as words made but that do not stick

untaken advice and old remorse.


the night blooming white lotus is a dark complexioned lord

a landlord's end

in the end even the landlord grew intimate


as an old friend he looked at the servant & her children


the lightness, the freshness, o the repressible humanity




seemed as crushed rajnigandha in the dust of this midnight



if he could turn the wheel back-




the ceiling fan's thin-long stem's wide spoke chugs the liquifying heat of summer



(it seems even to hit an odd dizzy buzzed mosquito spilling his blood)



a sad & profound pleasure & meanness & quietness spreads up in him.



he feels after a long time. the present sharp as a shaving nick




all around, a zen udder of consciousness, a deep, cushioned, stained diwan



the drone of the fan is the metronome of his dying




in that stabled emptiness, each labored breath pops



the last flowers of consciousness- they explode his head-artery



his mosquito-blood splotches the haveli walls



is all death parasitic murder?- the children stare into his cataracted eyes



& absorbedly aim their catapult

in reply

FIRST POEM
>
> (from an old manuscript perhaps)
>
> we dislike that you men & w0myn of meane rancke
>
> wear silver buttons at your knees.
>
>
> or that those of greater liberal estate & education
>
> must for no cald blewe reason
>
> tolerate your wearing tiffany horlles & scarfes
>
>
>
> SECOND POEM
>
>
> as fatal thoughts hover
>
> children kiss trees
>
> breath catches an iron lung.
>
>
> faces in imagination's marmalade mist
>
> tapeworm their ways
>
>
> (six months later who would believe?)
>
>
> kisses in relief thread the dawn
>
>
> searching out the needing;
>
>
> flee. do, not talk.
>
>
> THIRD POEM
>
>
>
> tender but not without shape
>
> a single vein in marble virile
> in its solitude even in its
> blockedness, a nerve turfs
> the castle
>
> the sea roils away under
>
> the bay's window
>
>
> fake softness for love.
>
> small but large of gestures & always
> home in a pure raw
>
> mirrored oasis
>
>
> bird-flight
>
>
> skip upons the sea
>
>
> FOURTH POEM
>
>
>
>
> if this tongue's hum were not so
>
> unrelenting
>
>
> who would have the means?
>
>
>
> let the smile remain so
>
>
> metonymizings
>
>
> nothing more
>
>
> not even its
>
> linelike bone between the lips.
>
>
> separately together
> tear by tear
>
>
> feed & flee feed & flee
>
>
> like sad thoughtfulness of quiet
>
> after the excitedmost circus
>
>
> after the folded tent.
>
>
> FIFTH POEM
>
>
>
> the deeper the quiet the
>
> more the tenacity. all sort of things
> happen
> all over
>
>
> dream-poachers:
>
>
> in an iced land of pleasure
> they are most separate
>
> and each, by
>
> tolerating,
>
>
> recriminate
>
>
>

haiti

1. when young she wished to travel far, see skyscrapers

now dead, she'd give her wings as prayer for the surviving


2.a heart stops
just in time

to slip out the rib-cage &

perch

in a stranger's
memory.

ears grow so fine

that they can hear

as debris breaks up all-around

an ant's hapless,

infinite unfinished

rage-full scream-

every man or ant remains virginal to death

public deaths are solitary still

though one can't distinguish

one's numbed hours of pain or loss or rasped breath from another.



as strewn shanties articulate the earth's quake.


3. at night times ever


in an enclosed room,,, mummified as it seems


trapped as all would feel, where prayers are for dustless starlight



make agitations & nuisance & rage. step on the feet of icons.

mandarin mahakavya

wang lung went in the fifth month on his horse

to the funeral of the second wife of the daughter of the

duke. in her palm her death had been foretold to the

exact phase of the moon. though it was spring the time was really

autumn the season was really winter was still.

a wooden age. the chief mourner was descended

from the emperor, was born when her mother was still

asleep so that when she came to she screamed &

forever hated her. they lived in the provinces rooted,

pervasive as grass. calamities surrender to their own accord.

will you attack the king with just footmen & chariots?

she dug deep into the earth unto the autumnal spring

and sat on its beaches and sang of her dead mother.

all this being a flagrant corruption of the manuscript.

take the silk utensils locusts keep the body fresh for 2

months after death before the burial there being no

impropriety in miscommunicating the death in such a ways

demonstrate your grief and then be silent. bury it again with

no mistakes in the ritual in a separate grave overlooking

a separate bay with flowers suchlike. discard no praise no blame

dress the corpse meet the bride travel to the western seaboard with

its older tribes. respect but kill. keep old friendships. here

the force is small the leaders hungry their warlike practices

only show. the 13th cycle of winter the 3 yr the 17th radical see the essays

on astrology by the learned and recently deceased mr.y.

wang lung wondered at the terms appropriate to narrate

the death of a princess, her soul's investiture

now passing to her daughter's husband and further

east past the mountain-ranges where the people

all helped pay in southernwood for the burial-(is there an error

in these texts on these sites or dates?). the mathematicians

calculated this as the dynasty's early years using the eclipse

and the odd usage of the phrase "paying interest on the moon".

the news of the death of the sovereign left the fort slowly

heavily, passing as a procession, past warring dukes

who now questioned every edict. propriety breeds presents.

the lord of the altars raised a powerful faction, breaking

each rule of the fourteen kinds of subordination accelerating

catastrophe, and soon here, an army this, an army that and there

sequels to covenants. affect the people by virtue, ravel the silk

you cannot lay down fire.a pantomime of insects. gather

the river's fish for the great sacrifice of atonement. the ruler this

and the ruler that, it wears one out. hunters have no rules no

husbandry. you cannot without without preparation nor

without anxiety. a house and tablet for the second wife

breaks the rules. the duke tells his feather weavers to

write his story even as the enemy crosses the suburb.

compassion is imperilled. the grain is in the locust's heart.

peace means to change.

wang lung's daughter goes to the harem at the statutory age

her sense of her worthiness makes her appear, twice,

in the classic. unseasonable as the undertaking was

covenants needed to be upgraded , more silk, more jade

she arrogates to her dignity as she thinks fit. the phrase

might mean more than seizure, certainly less than torture

the smearing of the lips of the daughter with the blood

of her victim. does this phrase mean son or hostage?

autumn is the seventh month. the sense of a hurried meeting

remains through all the sycophant's commissions. she built

a city while meditating, and a temple for her brother.

verily it is said the queen progresses the constellation

he was mated and then announced king in the temple.

let the sword separate the virtues and clan-bloods

merit for generations does not come simply

which river which fathers which officers which city

feet deep in snow?- which duke's suburb, on whose chariot

light and nimble may be your ancestors in ambuscade

smitten and cut to pieces hanging upside down as meat

in the mouth of crows. in every month an army

and a chronicle unconcluded. in spring the army entered.

in her virtue she did not covet territory the thread

of her karma light as muslin. discord amongst themselves

and secret dissatisfactions and so defeated. a lively

prejudiced account in the Book of . of course this tattoo

is a verb though it cannot be rendered. cross hostage princes

appear in each other's father's eyes. take your curved chariot

out of the temple. fill your mouth with the air of different countries

maintain your vigor. repentance is for the mature, the aged.

in the manner of killing he retained all propriety

feeding all tutelary deities, all fetuses of sons unborn.

every army must contribute a hundred pigs and fowl.

what use is it to curse a depraved man from field to field?

let the tablets tell their lies in stone. wang lung

omitted no ceremony that would have been appropriate

to the assassination of his brother at the meeting place

of the socalled jasmine river. he borrowed the fields

and symbols and the exchange of lands. the tripod

in the temple was a bribe. the roof of thatch

the chariot of grass, the millet is clean,

the historiographer of the interior, of ancient designation

thought of states that their roots reach wide

but their fruit be small else the horse will lie entangled

in its yoke. if you married above your state

the minister accompanied the husband, modest

reverent mindful of being untouched and returned

perhaps even if the crops fail or freeze. sacrifice

to keep locusts away. the sage's pencil must sometime

be pruned. the uncertain speculations of youth

the walled cities of childhood (whose spirit

possesses the centre?) step on the square to left then right

in the fishscape's battalion. the arrow on his shoulder notwithstanding

the child-bride fought. a sacrifice is unseasonable in fall

when insects forsake burrows. was he killed in a quarrel

about a bird or a woman sitting on the back of the shaman-officer?

what auspice of virtue be this be- what marks on the body

here one cannot mention the dead's name else an incestuous commerce

indulges. don't hunt with fire in winter. bury your heart in jade.

the greed reaches to the person. as he did not like the gift

and felt insulted, he felt he must invade according to the rules

of old precedence. he attacked covertly, and won, bloodless.

wang lung in the nimble army in the suburb, ardent, at peace

in the harmonious troop. if they must win it is because the army

can dance. divine the odds of the doubt and the produce of the union.

the exit gives its names in contempt. the signification must lie

in the epigraph. covenants in autumn presage death of the marquis.

your weight in the scale is inappreciable. the error of the day

of the entering of the death. a bad king's contracts increase disorder.

every officer lies in his virtue and his fear. cross the river

in order for on the other side lies defeat. let the mandarin live

by his nine unrepentant, unavenged calamities in its granary of ice.

reprisal upon reprisal, like lightning the armies

scatter rice, disrespectful to the duke's temples, tearing

the princess' chariot. any man can be a husband but there is only one

father, one mother, one prevision, one confederacy. drunk

she stole the flag cherishing eclipse and resentment

becoming a lone prisoner, refusing the marquisate, the sacrificial

epaulets. one understands the text only by proposing error.

the moon in its epicycle wants exactitude and remonstrates.

the coffin arrived in the seventh month of fall.

the burial was in winter, the mourning was forever

though he was an evil man brought to an evil end.

conjunctions are proper to the classical; poor lord

in deference to majesty do not stay quiet at home

but renew the great crimes and friendships and the common

wickedness between the states. these bodies stay

in no coffin. she sees with only half her eye.

equal concubines must have equal sons and eunuchs and cities

and governments. these narratives retire no justice.

in autumn build a reception to house the base murder.

mourning must feel as an absence. all dead soldiers

are remembered here as heroes. a trisyllabic name

is barbarous and must suffer withdrawment. the object of the meeting

is to repeat the crime, to bury for a second time.

marriages are recorded not burials not internments

at the beginning of the battle her heart lay agitated

as a crooked spear, after fulness comes absolution

under neither the tree of heaven nor state does the bridge

to the city of heaven pass over the enemies' gravestone.

ancestors have been boiled and slandered, revenge is no vagary

great officers hazard enterprise, describe restoration increase

both flower and root in all the eleven directions & generation

multiply prisoners and spoils feasts and detainments

eat the navel of the hour feed victims perpetually to altars

extinguish enemy lineage make stars fall as rain as wheat

but an inch from the dowager the stars retreated reascending

waiting patiently for troops and the real or pretended invasion.

sow vigorously your virtue abroad. at home in the season of melons

she was bestowed the robe of the general. she had wrestled the large boar

packed full of assassins. blood was the preponderant covenant spilt.

in the war chariot she took the longer road to deceive, to pursue

the flying enemy. wang lung covered his horses in tiger skin

to make extinct for the first time a heaven, to flood it

to hold great sacrifices of condolences throwing field of millet

into the plague. swift was ruin. he killed with a single slap.

praise or blame is futile in such. gain a harem but lose the state.

the king was bound in a rhinoceros hide and his hands

and feet pickled. let critics condemn who ever heard them

but mostly the print is silent, extinguished.

when men are full of fear their breath flares up

and makes real such monsters. citizens have a doubled heart.

make compassion, but act, speak, assert. you can neither

douse the flame from afar nor approach it.

make inroads into spring. there is nothing in the circumstances

inconsistent or dilatory. in snow's winter there stay many deer.

artful but worthless he feasted the guards got them drunk

killed whom he pleased. history lies fine underneath the print.

three feet turtle attack red deer gathering at the city's end.

in gazing-in the particular gold leaf he missed the whole

the palanquin, the harem's daughters and their parasols and cooks.

the war is a pantomimic dance that never tires, it asserts its rude joy

over all calamity. the sun photographs the mountains waving at the sky.

the temple's pillars stay painted red. ancestors within were fed.

the punitive expeditions of punishment is justice by default.

sacrifice by moonlight, the beating of drums, offerings of victims.

a woman of virtue and ability. a state that does not know to dance

does not know to make war, to surprise by stealth. spirits flee

the temple walls. this city is in winter, its grain insufficient

its insects in plague, even horses bolt the stables.

graphic but fabulous the tales of tribes at boundaries:

those last conquered are set upon the next outsider.

corpses grow in rain feeding upon imagination's dark archive

historiographers of the interiors must force reason

a serf with money is still indentured in an absent hour.

every autumn a daughter is buried, age seven being the cutoff

for the historical record. the younger ones are still too much

in the womb's marine heaven. tablets commend succor

for children-marquis' culmination. if one's heart holds no flaw

how may he regret childlessness, posterity has other ways.

carriages and horses and feet and diagrams, other original dignities

new tablets will be put in old temples, even oceans age

armies are cast away, the spirit changes, new milfoils

prophesy anew, storks fly in augury. cook for your rulers

offer in sealskin, leather carriages and the cold metal of symbol.

the text conceals the manner of death in rare display

of dilatory euphemisms. but all men have relatives

and horses and jade and taxes and immigrants are in stake.

that year in spring there was no rain in the fourth month

by the rain of the sixth the new army had moved in.

the lack of rain was no calamity but an auspicious kindness.

the threat was as of the locking of the boat on a placid lake

his cheek lost color, an incursion followed, the spirits strained.

what robe will you wear in the coffin? the tortoise divines.

discriminate is the guilt. the heir-daughter walls her grief.

relentless is the fable. in fall lies the eclipse, hour of dispossession

read the clouds. assassins are not to be played with. spirits vomit.

in a grand display the flags loom. families are criminals together.

they allowed her to burn her coffin, returned her silk.

if you are resolved, don't pretend to be humble; choose strength

or alliance. morning awaits evening. do honor to virtue and the punishments.

secure succession. invade the great temple to make sacrifice of the 5th yr in it

and to interpret its tablet. the charioteer will betray & mystify.

the tribes of the east will rise. the prince lay dead unclaimed, deceived

unsceptred, inadmissable, obtrudant.

more sayable

to be, or not. to be or not.


whether tis' nobler... or not.


to suffer slings & arrows of outrageous fortune,

or to take arms against a sea of troubles.


& by opposing, end. no more.


them natural shocks that flesh is heir to, consummated to.


( in that sleep of death what dreams may come to?)


when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, this gives us pause.


there is a respect that makes for this calamitous & long, long life.


the whip & scorn of time, the oppressor's contumely


the law's delay, the insolence of office that spurns patient merit.


(make quietus with a bare bodkin?) fardels bear & grunt&sweat.)


but. death's undiscovered country from whence none return:


muzzles the will. we'd choose present ills than fly to new ones-


conscious is our cowardice. & th' native hue of resolution is sickled by


thought's pale. enterprises' pith turns awry-.


but soft all, & ophelia, horatio too.



--" remember sins & my irresolutions too"-