Our Poet

"I just read in the NYRB a review of your book, Endless Song: Tiruvāymoli.  And, of course, I had to write to you immediately ;)  After sending this message, I will order a copy of the book."

Tiruvāymoli is a poetic and religious work in Tamil, and dates back about 1,200 years.  Especially because I was raised in a religious orthodox environment, I am familiar with the name of the work and its author--Nammālvār.  The ālvārs were poet-saints devoted to Vishnu.  Though we were raised as followers of Shiva, the family worshiped Vishnu and his avatars also.

My parents were also serious fans of carnatic music, and we--yes, we kids too--sang a few Thiruppavai that were authored by the only female ālvār, Andal.  As an elementary school kid, I sang one of the Thiruppavais at the music competition in school and won a prize, I think.

However, what I knew about ālvārs and Nammālvār was absolutely superficial.

There was also another reason why Nammālvār was special.  His life was in the geography that is all too familiar to me.  The town Alwarthirunagiri, where he lived, is along the banks of the river Thamirabarani--the same river near Pattamadai and Srivaikuntam.   Nammālvār, meaning our ālvār, was literally ours.

So, naturally, I immediately emailed the author, Archana Venkatesan, with whom I had had prior correspondence because of the Pattamadai connection.

The book arrived a couple of days ago.  In the email to Professor Venkatesan, I wrote:

Lacking an intellectual grounding in these topics means that most of your book will be way, way, way over my head.  I am so delighted and thankful that you are doing such fantastic work.  Thankful that you are unearthing the poetry and history of a place that is so dear to me, and helping me and the world appreciate the richness through the English language that is now practically the lingua franca.

Venkatesan's translations of Nammālvār's verses are poetic.  Here's a sampler that will appeal to readers anywhere:

As I wrote in the email to Venkatesan, I am in for a treat.

I wish I could engage my father about all these.  But, a serious conversation over the phone with a 91-year old man is not easy.  I will do that in person, in December, when I will also play Ali Akbar Khan's treatment of the raag Sindhu Bhairavi.

Nammālvār, Kampaṉ, ... and Pattamadai?

There is something about poetry that appeals to me, even though I have a tough time understanding poems because they are never straightforward.  There is plenty of subtext that interpreters have to explain to me.  Even worse the situation is when the poems are from the old days.  Centuries old.  In those cases, I need translators before I can seek the help of interpreters.

Tamil literature has poems in plenty from the Sangam era.  But, that classical Tamil is not the Tamil that we speak now and, therefore, is well beyond my intellectual abilities.  It is a tragedy that decades under European colonial powers interrupted the transmission of knowledge down the generations through a simple act of imposing a new language as the official language.  That interruption meant that Shakespeare became well known to many young students for whom the local masters of the past were practically non-existent.

Reading David Shulman's biography of Tamil a couple of years ago was, thus, a pleasure because, for one, he presented in English the history of the language along with samples of great works of literature.  It was a feast unlike any.  

Many of the classical works are religious as well, which is how I am at least familiar with the names of a few poets and their works.  Nammālvār's Tiruvāymoli is one of those.  Who hasn't heard of the name Nammālvār.  But, how many of us have read more than a couple of lines of his Tiruvāymoli?

Archana Venkatesan has done us a huge favor by translating into English Nammālvār's Tiruvāymoli.  The 528-page book includes a foreword by, yes, David Shulman.  A review essay in The New York Review of Books was how I came to know about this translation. 

Venkatesan has a Pattamadai connection too!  A couple of months ago, in the depths of the pandemic that precluded my annual travel to the old country, one night I googled for "Pattamadai."  One of the links led me to this blog post, which was about the blogger--Archana Venkatesan--visiting her ancestral village--Pattamadai--for the first time.  She writes there:

This is the village, deep in beautiful ten-Pandya Nadu, where my maternal grandfather was born and raised. This was where he studied, gaining life-skills that pulled him and his family out of difficult circumstances to forge a better life for all of them. This is where my paternal grandmother studied, where my paternal great-great-grandfather helped run a school. Where my uncles and aunts studied.

I emailed her that night.  I wrote:

I understand from your post that your grandparents and elders lived in "mela theru."  My grandmother's home was in "keezha theru"--almost at the very end and near the Shivan Koil.  I have spent many summers in Pattamadai during my childhood years; the last time I was there was 10 to 15 years ago.  I have been to mela theru only once: When I was a kid, my father took me there to visit with his friend, Sankaran, who was also visiting from Bombay.

In her reply, Venkatesan noted that until the pandemic hit she had been going to Tirunelveli every year for 15 years for her professional work.  An academic, a Tamil scholar, based in the US, who unearths for us the lost works and also translates for our understanding the old classical literature.  How fantastic!

After reading the NYRB essay, I immediately wrote to her.  In her reply, Venkatesan included a link to her latest project, which is "to produce a complete, scholarly, fully annotated literary English translation of the Tamil Rāmāyaṇa of Kampaṉ."

The ever curious me wanted to know more about her collaborators in this multi-year project.  In addition to Shulman, there was another name that I recognized: Aniruddhan Vasudevan.  Vasudevan translated into English Perumal Murugan's One Part Woman.

We owe a great deal to these scholars who are keeping the classics alive.  

Legacies

Today marks the end of the National Poetry Month.  Of course, we will continue to write and read poetry later too! ;)

Today's poem brings together a couple of different aspects that interest me.  African-American poetry (remember?) and my interest in old stories as in the legacies that I have inherited and are a part of me.

Here is Legacies by Nikki Giovanni:

her grandmother called her from the playground   

       “yes, ma’am”

       “i want chu to learn how to make rolls” said the old   

woman proudly

but the little girl didn’t want

to learn how because she knew

even if she couldn’t say it that

that would mean when the old one died she would be less   

dependent on her spirit so

she said

       “i don’t want to know how to make no rolls”

with her lips poked out

and the old woman wiped her hands on

her apron saying “lord

       these children”

and neither of them ever

said what they meant

and i guess nobody ever does

No more sinecure unto death

Prosaic I am, yes.
But, I love the idea of poems.

Having a book of poems around is like having flowers on the table.

Like playing an old LP on a sunny afternoon.
Like having coffee with cheesecake.
Or better yet, having coffee with cheesecake while listening to an opera LP on a sunny afternoon in a room with a bunch of flowers in a vase.

But, prosaic I am.
Some of us are born that way.

Yet, from time to time, I seek out poems.
With my "indefinite tenure" having been revoked, 

I needed something to channel my emotions.

That's what poems are for.

Now you know why I seek out poems.

But, don't forget that prosaic I am.

With Tenure
by David Lehman

If Ezra Pound were alive today
(and he is)
he'd be teaching
at a small college in the Pacific Northwest
and attending the annual convention
of writing instructors in St. Louis
and railing against tenure,
saying tenure
is a ladder whose rungs slip out
from under the scholar as he climbs
upwards to empty heaven
by the angels abandoned
for tenure killeth the spirit
(with tenure no man becomes master)
Texts are unwritten with tenure,
under the microscope, sous rature
it turneth the scholar into a drone
decayed the pipe in his jacket's breast pocket.
Hamlet was not written with tenure,
nor were written Schubert's lieder
nor Manet's Olympia painted with tenure.
No man of genius rises by tenure
Nor woman (I see you smile).
Picasso came not by tenure
nor Charlie Parker;
Came not by tenure Wallace Stevens
Not by tenure Marcel Proust
Nor Turner by tenure
With tenure hath only the mediocre
a sinecure unto death. Unto death, I say!
WITH TENURE
Nature is constipated the sap doesn't flow
With tenure the classroom is empty
et in academia ego
the ketchup is stuck inside the bottle
the letter goes unanswered the bell doesn't ring.

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield

April is poetry month.  Something that even this prosaic blogger remembers and likes to blog about every April.

Poetry speaks to the emotional beings that we are.  I did not realize the emotional appeal of poems until I was well into adulthood, as a working stiff in the US.  I went to a poetry reading.  The poet was a local boy who had made it big on the other coast.  As the middle-aged poet read lines from his poem, it hit me: This is what poetry is about!  Those lines spoke to me, which is what we expect from good poetry.

Since then, I have come to realize that when the right person reads a great poem, oh boy, it is as if the mysteries of the universe are being solved.  One word at a time, and one verse at a time.

We collectively experienced that when we listened to Amanda Gorman reading her poem at President Biden's inauguration.  When her reading ended, we wanted more.  Remember?

As Margaret Renkl writes in the NY Times:

Thank God for our poets, here in the mildness of April and in the winter storms alike, who help us find the words our own tongues feel too swollen to speak. Thank God for the poets who teach our blinkered eyes to see these gifts the world has given us, and what we owe it in return.

Thank god, indeed!

The title of this post is from the final stanza of Lord Tennyson's Ulysses.   Ulysses reaches Calypso’s island, exhausted after a shipwreck.  The goddess Calypso offers herself to Ulysses and also promises him immortality.  Think about this: The most beautiful woman ever and immortality.

Ulysses turns down the offer.

He then heads to the high seas.  An unknown expanse of adventure.

Ulysses wanted to live a life that he would not regret.

Tennyson writes:

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

I wish us all well with the chances that we take, and may we never have to regret the chances we didn't, and don't, take!

He stirred his Velvet Head

During fair(er) weather months, at one of our favorite beaches, we spot the bobbing seals riding the waves close enough to the shores.  Sometimes, with their heads alone visible, they look like the ends of periscopes sticking out of submarines.  Which is when we wonder whether they are watching us, when we are watching them.

As we walk along the waters, they seem to follow along in parallel.

I don't need to know if they are really watching us humans.  The science of the animal behavior interests me little.  The idea that they are watching and playing with us from a distance makes us happy.  It is charming.

It is like what Emily Dickinson wrote in "A Bird, came down the Walk."

A Bird, came down the Walk - 

He did not know I saw -

He bit an Angle Worm in halves

And ate the fellow, raw, 

 

And then, he drank a Dew

From a convenient Grass -

And then hopped sidewise to the Wall

To let a Beetle pass -

 

He glanced with rapid eyes,

That hurried all abroad -

They looked like frightened Beads, I thought,

He stirred his Velvet Head. - 

 

Like one in danger, Cautious,

I offered him a Crumb,

And he unrolled his feathers, 

And rowed him softer Home -

 

Than Oars divide the Ocean,

Too silver for a seam,

Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon,

Leap, plashless as they swim. 

When will they just let me sit under my guava tree, eating my guavas

"Did you listen to the interview on NPR with an Indian-American poet?" she asked.

I used to listen to NPR. A lot. In the morning. In the evening. On Weekdays. On weekend.

It has been a long time since I tuned in.

I still pay my dues every month.  Automatic recurring donation. 

But, I rarely ever turn on the radio to listen to NPR.

All because of one man.

tRump.

I simply cannot bear to listen the orange, arrogant, bloviating pomposity that looks like a human but isn't.

I know I have missed out on a lot by shutting NPR off.  But, I prefer my sanity. My peace of mind.

"He was born in Bangalore, and immigrated as a child."

It rang a bell somewhere.  I tucked away the comment.

Today, I looked up the NPR schedule and tracked down the segment.  I recognized the name: Vijay Seshadri.

The name is familiar because I have blogged about him.  As I wrote there, even winning the Pulitzer is not as big an achievement as "an Indian-American stating to his parents about his wish to be a poet, when the "norm" is to enter the more traditionally high-income occupations."

Seshadri says in that NPR interview:

What we call poetry, I think, riddles and penetrates everybody's life, whether they realize it or not. And it's as simple as creating a narrative of the things you're doing in a day to something as complex as reconciling yourself to things like grief and things like devastation. I would appropriate all of that for the realm of poetry.

Yes, we could all use a little poetry. 

The poem that Sehadri read at the end seemed odd.  So, I looked it up.  It turns out that he read only a part of the poem.  Either that, or they edited the first part because of time issues.

Here's that poem in full from my favorite magazine.

Visiting San Francisco
By Vijay Seshadri

I wanted to curl up
in the comfortable cosmic melancholy of my past,
in the sadness of my past being passed.
I wanted to tour the museum of my antiquities
and look at the sarcophagi there.
I wanted to wallow like a water buffalo in the cool,
sagacious mud of my past,
so I wrote you and said I’d be in town and could we meet.
But you think my past is your present.
You wouldn’t relent, you wouldn’t agree
to dinner or a cup of coffee or even a bag of peanuts
on a bench in North Beach.
You didn’t want to curl up or tour or wallow with me.
You’re still mad, long after the days
have turned into decades, about the ways I let you down.
The four hundred thousand ways.
Maybe I would be, too.
But people have done worse to me.
I don’t think I’m being grotesque when I tell you
I’ve been flayed and slayed and force-fed anguish.
I’ve been a human cataract
plunging through a noose and going to pieces on the rocks.
I’ve been a seagull tethered to Alcatraz.
What can I say, what more can I say, how much more
vulnerable can I be, to persuade you
now that I’ve persuaded myself?
Why can’t you just let it go?
Well, at least I’m in San Francisco.
San Francisco, where the homeless are most at home—
crouching over their tucker bags under your pollarded trees—
because your beauty is as free to them
as to the domiciled in their
dead-bolt domiciles, your beauty is as free to
the innocent as to the guilty.
The fog has burned off.
In a cheap and windy room on Russian Hill
a man on the run unwraps the bandages
swaddling his new face, his reconstructed face,
and looks in the mirror and sees
the face of Humphrey Bogart. Only here
could such a thing happen.
It was really always you, San Francisco,
time won’t ever darken my love for you,
San Francisco.

Take a couple of minutes and listen.

I listened to a lovely poem. You too should.

I have often written (like here) about the problems that I encountered, and continue to face, because English is a second language to me.  With the rare exceptional people who have a flair for languages, most of us reconcile ourselves to some aspects of the second language that we simply cannot master.

But, hey, the wonderful thing is that we are fluent in a second language.  What an accomplishment!

Back in the old country, the English language is an integral part of urban life.  Urbane is measured by how much the English language is used!

In such a setting, there are people who want to be in, even if their English proficiency is not up to par.  And there are people who look down on those who lack proficiency--I used to be one of them, sadly!

Once you, dear reader, understand this context, you will be able to appreciate and enjoy the poem “Goodbye Party for Miss Pushpa T. S.” by Nissim Ezekiel.

A note on Nissim Ezekiel. 

As with almost every aspect of life, here too I was ignorant.  I had no idea about a Nissim Ezekiel. 

A Google search led me to this obituary tribute from 2004:

Nissim Ezekiel, who has died aged 79, was the father of post-independence Indian verse in English. A prolific dramatist, critic, broadcaster and social commentator, he was professor of English and reader in American literature at Mumbai (formerly Bombay) University during the 1990s, and secretary of the Indian branch of the international writers' organisation PEN.

Ezekiel belonged to Mumbai's tiny, Marathi-speaking Bene Israel Jewish community, which never experienced anti-semitism. They were descended from oil-pressers who sailed from Galilee around 150BC, and, shipwrecked off the Indian subcontinent, settled, intermarried and forgot their Hebrew, yet maintained the Sabbath. There were 20,000 Bene Israel in India 60 years ago; now, only 5,000 remain. Most of Ezekiel's relatives left for Israel; he served as a volunteer at an American-Jewish charity in Bombay.

This part sets it up well for “Goodbye Party for Miss Pushpa T. S.”

After 1965, he also began embracing India's English vernacular, and teased its idiosyncrasies in Poster Poems and in The Professor. In the latter he wrote: "Visit please my humble residence also./ I am living just on opposite house's backside."

I would rather that you listened to the poem.   

Black Lives Matter!

The following poem by Gwendolyn Brooks is from The Poetry Foundation's collections.

Riot

By Gwendolyn Brooks

A riot is the language of the unheard.
—martin luther king

John Cabot, out of Wilma, once a Wycliffe,

all whitebluerose below his golden hair,

wrapped richly in right linen and right wool,

almost forgot his Jaguar and Lake Bluff;

almost forgot Grandtully (which is The

Best Thing That Ever Happened To Scotch); almost

forgot the sculpture at the Richard Gray

and Distelheim; the kidney pie at Maxim’s,

the Grenadine de Boeuf at Maison Henri.

Because the Negroes were coming down the street.

Because the Poor were sweaty and unpretty

(not like Two Dainty Negroes in Winnetka)

and they were coming toward him in rough ranks.

In seas. In windsweep. They were black and loud.

And not detainable. And not discreet.

Gross. Gross. “Que tu es grossier!” John Cabot

itched instantly beneath the nourished white

that told his story of glory to the World.

“Don’t let It touch me! the blackness! Lord!” he whispered

to any handy angel in the sky.

But, in a thrilling announcement, on It drove

and breathed on him: and touched him. In that breath

the fume of pig foot, chitterling and cheap chili,

malign, mocked John. And, in terrific touch, old

averted doubt jerked forward decently,

cried, “Cabot! John! You are a desperate man,

and the desperate die expensively today.”

John Cabot went down in the smoke and fire

and broken glass and blood, and he cried “Lord!

Forgive these nigguhs that know not what they do.”

A powerful poem.

It is a tragedy that the poem which was published in 1969 is relevant even in 2020!

Here's to hoping that anti-Blackness will be permanently voted out of power in November, and that the institutional structures that enable racism will be rapidly dismantled.

ps: I remain convinced that poems are to be heard. Listened.  So, here's another poem by Gwendolyn Brooks.

காலை எழுந்தவுடன் நாளைய கேள்வி

During these Covid times, practically every morning I face the same question over and over again as if I am playing a role in Groundhog Day.  It is the question that Kannadasan poetically phrased it in this phenomenal song in Apoorva Ragangal: காலை எழுந்தவுடன் நாளைய கேள்வி, which roughly translates to "After waking up, one ponders about the day."



A couple of mornings ago, I didn't have to think about that question only because I woke up with this Kannadasan song from an old movie playing in my mind.

After breakfast, I emailed a few in the extended family about it.  "YouTube helped me pull it up in no time, and I have already played it three times ;)" I wrote to them.



When it comes to Kannadasan's songs, I pay attention to the lyrics, which otherwise I rarely ever do.  The man always spoke to me, though I couldn't figure out why.  It was well into my life in the US, decades ago, a chance conversation with a colleague who taught English helped me understand the connect.

Poetry is about emotions, she said.

Aha!

Poetry does what prose often does not, and it does that in a mere few verses, sometimes even in a few lines. A poem conveys the emotions that we feel, or want to feel.

Kannadasan did that well for me and millions of other Tamils.

Like in the following two lines in that Apoorva Ragangal song:

ஏன் என்ற கேள்வி ஒன்று என்றைக்கும் தங்கும்
மனிதன் இன்ப துன்பம் எதிலும் கேள்விதான் மிஞ்சும்
("Why?" will forever be a question in the mind
Through all sufferings and joys, questions will always remain!)

A few years ago, back in 2013, I blogged about Kannadasan, which, for whatever reason, continues to draw readers.  I quoted from Kannadasan's lyrics in this old song:

வாழ்க்கை என்றால் ஆயிரம் இருக்கும்
வாசல்தோறும் வேதனை இருக்கும்
வந்த துன்பம் எது என்றலும்
வாடி நின்றால் ஓய்வதில்லை
உனக்கும் கிழே உள்ளவர் கோடி
நினைத்து பார்த்து நிம்மதி தேடு

If only I had the abilities to translate that into English!

I suppose Kannadasan's poetry appealed to many of us because we didn't read them, but listened to the verses.  Poetry is to be heard.  If English is your language, then you might want to head here, which is my favorite site to listen to poetry in English, some of which are translations.   (This post from a couple of days ago was triggered by the poem that I listened to.)

To listen to Kannadasan's poems, well, there is Youtube.

Smell the coronavirus

Reports indicate that the loss of smell and taste is an early indicator of an COVID-19 infection.  We take our nose and tongue and everything else for granted, until we find out that there is something wrong.  Such is life!

The poem "Smell of things to come" now comes across as an eerie omen about the novel coronavirus.  It is a poem by Vijay Nambisan, my old childhood friend and school-mate.

In his memory, and with April being poetry month, here is Vijay's poem:

Smell of Things to Come

By Vijay Nambisan

A nose is a nose is a nose. Who knows
Those fibres of smell better than I? The scent
Of a book that grows on me, of a rose
Withered by fondling, of newsprint, of drink
Untasted but soon to be consumed, of course
I know them all and know too the gross
Odours of unwashed flesh, of dirt
Shed or retained by skin, and I know almost
The scent of love, because sometimes it flows
Between breast and breast, and my nose
Has nestled there.
     When blows the wind above
My senses, I have smelled the clouds grow
Against the sky. One scent remains to know,
The last breath I shall ever take as I.

Vijay's photo in the 1971 annual school magazine.

Is there anybody going to listen to my story?

No, it is not about "Ah, girl, girl, girl."

I wanted some poetry in my life and I turned to one of my usual sources.  I was in for a treat.

It was a poem that I had never heard about, and by a poet whose name is new to me.  Uncovering my ignorance is a humbling experience every single day.  When there is very little that any one of us knows, how could one ever be arrogant enough to exclaim "I alone can fix it" is beyond me!

Walter de la Mare.  Perhaps you know that name.  I hadn't until I visited this site for a dose of poetry.

I pulled up his poem so that I could read the words as the voice read aloud The Listeners.

                     The Listeners

By Walter de La Mare

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,   

   Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses   

   Of the forest’s ferny floor:

And a bird flew up out of the turret,   

   Above the Traveller’s head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;   

   ‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;   

   No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,   

   Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners   

   That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight   

   To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,   

   That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken   

   By the lonely Traveller’s call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,   

   Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,   

   ’Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even   

   Louder, and lifted his head:—

‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,   

   That I kept my word,’ he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,   

   Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house   

   From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,   

   And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,   

   When the plunging hoofs were gone.

If I didn't know anything about the poet, which I didn't until I looked up his entry in Wikipedia, I would have easily thought that this was a poem that had a great deal of subtext.  After reading about de la Mare, I can't but help wonder if it was intended as nothing but a poem for kids to enjoy getting scared about in the night as their parents or grandparents recited the lines.

‘Tell them I came, and no one answered, | That I kept my word,’

That's the best most of us can do day in and day out.

Did I ask to be born?

Prose I can easily understand, even if I don't always get all the subtexts.  But, poetry is different. Right from the old school days, I have been puzzled that the poem's words say one thing and then the interpretation is always something very different.  Which has then led to wonder why poets don't say what they mean in a straightforward way.  No wonder then that women, with their complicated conversations of hidden meanings, love poems and poets ;)

The poem here, from The New Yorker, seems straightforward enough.  I think I get it.  But, I bet that I don't have a clue what the poem is all about; thankfully, unlike the old days, there is no quarterly exam ;)

We don't ask to be born.  As a comedian (from Brazil was he?) put it, we were once nothing but a sperm, with a dick and an asshole as neighbors!

Our creators--father and mother--perhaps got together for her looks and his money, or for his looks and her money, or for whatever reason.  Maybe they wanted a boy and they kept trying.  An aunt of mine is supposed to have exclaimed "girl again?" after the third child also turning out to be a girl!  the cosmos being a comedian, well, that girl also ended up having a daughter ;)

We don't ask to be born a boy or a girl.  There are people struggling with their inner boy trapped in a girl's body, or vice versa.  They didn't ask that either.

Once we are born, we struggle to make sense of it all. We rush from pillar to post, move from place to place, read and listen to the great minds, in search of the meaning of life.

The poet says, "I want to say that love is the meaning, but I think that love may be the means, what we ask with."

All you need is love!

I Cannot Say I Did Not

By Sharon Olds

I cannot say I did not ask
to be born. I asked with my mother’s beauty,
and her money. I asked with my father’s desire
for his orgasms and for my mother’s money.
I asked with the cradle my sister had grown out of.
I asked with my mother’s longing for a son,
I asked with patriarchy. I asked
with the milk that would well in her breasts, needing to be
drained by a little, living pump.
I asked with my sister’s hand-me-downs, lying
folded. I asked with geometry, with
origami, with swimming, with sewing, with
what my mind would thirst to learn.
Before I existed, I asked, with the love of my
children, to exist, and with the love of their children.
Did I ask with my tiny flat lungs
for a long portion of breaths? Did I ask
with the space in the ground, like a portion of breath,
where my body will rest, when it is motionless,
when its elements move back into the earth?
I asked, with everything I did not
have, to be born. And nowhere in any
of it was there meaning, there was only the asking
for being, and then the being, the turn
taken. I want to say that love
is the meaning, but I think that love may be
the means, what we ask with.

Tourists

We were in Khajuraho.  A place that mesmerized me ever since I read about it during my high school years.

Khajuraho was infinitely more than what I had known.  It was as if I were in an entirely different planet.  A planet that was a peaceful and clean paradise, unlike the chaotic and polluted places we came from and through.

We were tourists.

Like all tourists, we happily walked around where once rich and powerful kingdoms existed.
Life was nasty, brutish, and short, to most, while it was a royal life to a few.
Where wars were fought. And people were killed.
Temples were built. And temples were demolished.
Art was created. And art was destroyed.

We tourists returned home.

This being poetry month, I wanted a poem that would speak to these emotions.  I was reminded of a poem that I had read a while ago.  It took me some time to track it down; time that was better spent than on Twitter.  Am delighted that the poem is by Amichai, whose another poem I read and blogged two years ago.

Here is Amichai on tourists.

Tourists
By Yehuda Amichai

Visits of condolence is all we get from them.
They squat at the Holocaust Memorial,
They put on grave faces at the Wailing Wall
And they laugh behind heavy curtains
In their hotels.
They have their pictures taken
Together with our famous dead
At Rachel's Tomb and Herzl's Tomb
And on Ammunition Hill.
They weep over our sweet boys
And lust after our tough girls
And hang up their underwear
To dry quickly
In cool, blue bathrooms.

New year greetings from "a civilized human being"

This is poetry month, and it is the Tamil New Year.

So, here is a classic from quite a few years ago.  The lyrics are by the poet Bharatidasan,



This poem is a sincere and touching homage to the language, Tamil.  And, of course, set to delightful music by the old masterful team of Viswanathan-Ramamurthy.

Tamil is one of the oldest living languages of the world--if not the oldest--with a vast body of literature.  The older I get, the more I appreciate the immense richness in which I grew up, but failed to systematically study.  I am all the happier that I came across the fantastic biography of Tamil that David Shulman authored.  As he so wonderfully put it, "to know Tamil" can also mean "to be a civilized human being."

But, of course, the old Tamil is even more difficult to understand than Shakespeare's English can be to a teenager of today.  We needed experts to interpret that old Tamil to us, but the teachers we had in school fell far short of conveying the beauty and lush gold in the historical past.  Come to think of it, those teachers murdered the language.

The song in the video below is a poem by Manonmaniam Sundaram Pillai.  It later became the official state song of Tamil Nadu.

Happy new year, dear reader!

Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall

But too much is falling here in Oregon.

The key word there is "some."  Not a whole lot, dammit!

It has been pouring here in the Valley.  The atmospheric river, as the weather folks call it, has been dumping water into the rivers here on land, and everywhere else.

The ground is super-saturated.  True to my father's engineering claim that water is an enemy for the bitumen, roads are rapidly becoming pothole avenues.  A little bit more rain and I will have to trade in my car for a boat.

The river is running brown, full, fast, and furious.  But, comforting it is to get a visual confirmation that my home is well above on a high ground.

April showers these are not; these are April downpours!

April is also poetry month.  Enjoy the poetry that Ella Fitzgerald sings so easily, smoothly, and emotionally.

Into each life some rain must fall 
But too much is falling in mine 
Into each heart some tears must fall 
But some day the sun will shine 

Some folks can lose the blues in their hearts 
But when I think of you another shower starts 
Into each life some rain must fall 
But too much is falling in mine 

Into each life some rain must fall 
But too much, too much is fallin' in mine 
Into each heart some tears must fall 
But some day the sun will shine 

Some folks can lose the blues in their heart 
But when I think of you another shower starts 
Into each life some rain must fall 
But too much is fallin' in mine 

Into each and every life some rain has got to fall 
But too much of that stuff is fallin' into mine 
And into each heart some tears got to fall 
And I know that someday that sun is bound to shine 

Some folks can lose the blues in their heart
But when I think of you another shower starts
Into each life some rain must fall
But too much is fallin' in mine

Those cunning linguists!

In my early years of teaching, which was back in California, it did not take me much time to understand that students in my classes needed to learn how to write at the college level.  But, I could not spend all my class time teaching them about writing, nor did I have the ability to explain to the class how to write well.

I, therefore, did the smartest thing ever: I sought help from the English Department. As I have noted here, Kim loaned me one of her teaching assistants for 30 minutes each week for about six weeks.  One of those was Rebecca.  Once, over lunch, we talked about books, and to this day I am pleasantly flummoxed by her response to the my question on the book that she was reading.  It was about grammar!  Yes, it was about grammar. No kidding!

David Shulman gives me an idea of why those linguistics folks love to explore grammar.  He writes about the grammar in Tamil, which makes it interesting even for blokes like me.  Shulman then proceeds to write about the beauty of the language by using the example of the word undayirukka (உண்டாயிருக்கா) which means "to be or become pregnant."

I had no idea about any of these until now!

Of course, Shulman's book is not merely about grammar.  It is a biography of Tamil.

So, about this old language with a rich past and apparently a beautiful grammar too, well, where did it come from?

Shulman writes that "speakers of Dravidian languages were in place in south India, and perhaps also farther north, in the first millennium B.C."  But, it is all a mystery.  "We do not know when Dravidian language first penetrated the subcontinent; there may be a link to the Iron Age cultures of the southern megaliths, or even to the far more ancient world of Neolithic pastoralists."

But, so much is clear: Tamil's grammar paved the way for its poetry.

One of the many examples that Shulman uses in order to convey the richness and beauty of the language is one from the Sangam period.  The anthologies from this period "are broadly sorted into two thematic categories: akam or “the interior,” consisting of love poems, and puram or “the exterior,” a more diverse group, including martial eulogy, public praise, and worldly wisdom."  Here is one (translation by A.K. Ramanujan):

Of course, the akam and puram duality "can only be artificially kept apart."

A seemingly outer being like the beloved, or the god, is so deeply twined into the poet's own in-ness that we soon give up on identifying any out-ness at all.  The Tamil cosmos has no external boundary.

That is profound.

DAMN! April is the cruelest month

I looked up the news on the Pulitzers.  There is no way I could have ever expected this:

[Kendrick] Lamar is not only the first rapper to win the award since the Pulitzers expanded to music in 1943, but he is also the first winner who is not a classical or jazz musician.

A Pulitzer for a rapper. A Nobel for a singer-songwriter. The times they are a changin'.  Poetry and music, too, are rapidly being transformed like every other aspect of our lives.

I have heard the name Kendrick Lamar.  But, I have no idea about his music. A CNN opinion piece helps me out:

Lamar is providing anthems for revolutionary millennials across the country, in much the way that Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddam" sounded an anthem for the civil rights movement.
Like Simone, the roots of hip hop are absolutely political.

Damn!

I looked up a review of Lamars' album that the Pulitzer recognized:

Two of the most striking examples of this recur throughout “DAMN.” In one, Mr. Lamar samples Fox News commentators responding to his 2015 uplift anthem, “Alright,” with derision, including Geraldo Rivera’s suggesting that hip-hop is worse for black youth than racism (and Mr. Lamar addresses Mr. Rivera directly on “YAH.”).

Political, damn!

But, I am frankly at a loss to understand and appreciate this music.  I tried a couple of them, including this.  I suppose I might not know what it is all about, as much as I know not about most things in life?

At least this poem I can understand:

Source

God has pity

It was a column on India.

It started with a photograph of the synagogue in Cochin (Kochi) in Kerala.

I was tempted to ditch reading it--yet another writer having stumbled upon the coexistence of people of all faiths in my old country.  Some bromides.

But, I gave the writer the benefit of the doubt, only because I usually like his columns.

I am glad I did.

Not because of any insights there about the old country. Nope.  Not to this old country man.

I am glad because of the following that I read there:

My favorite Israeli poet is Yehuda Amichai. In his poem “Tourists” a guide points to a Roman arch in Jerusalem. Amichai writes: “I said to myself: redemption will come only if their guide tells them, ‘You see that arch from the Roman period? It’s not important: but next to it, left and down a bit, there sits a man who’s bought fruit and vegetables for his family.’ ”

Such a simple message from a poet, right?  It is not about the arch from the Roman times.  It is about the people here and now, who are doing their best to provide their families with good lives.

The uninformed pretentious academic that I am, well, I have never heard of Amichai.  It is amazing how little I know.  It is a challenge not to let that feeling of ignorance overwhelm me into complete and total inaction.

Especially this being the month for poetry, I spent some time reading a few other poems by Amichai.  Which is how I ran into this, with which I will end this post.

God has pity on kindergarten children
By Yehuda Amichai

God has pity on kindergarten children,
He pities school children -- less.
But adults he pities not at all.

He abandons them,
And sometimes they have to crawl on all fours
In the scorching sand
To reach the dressing station,
Streaming with blood.

But perhaps
He will have pity on those who love truly
And take care of them
And shade them
Like a tree over the sleeper on the public bench.

Perhaps even we will spend on them
Our last pennies of kindness
Inherited from mother,
So that their own happiness will protect us
Now and on other days.

Andalusia Of Love

As I have often mentioned here, thanks to the rather prosaic schooling back in the old country, I never got educated about the role that poetry plays.  Well, ok, not really. It was school that failed in educating me about poetry.  Popular culture did that wonderfully.  Kannadasan's poetry, for instance, set to wonderful music, taught me a lot about emotions and the human condition.

Now, looking back, I find it rather strange that while the day-to-day cultural behavior discouraged public displays of sadness or love, the same culture actively sought out Kannadasan's thoughts on those emotions and more.

Much later in life, I did get acquainted with poetry.  I still remember an English literature professor-colleague talking about what poetry does that prose often does not, and how in a few verses, sometimes even in a few lines, a poem conveys the emotions that we feel, or want to feel.

Bob Dylan being the recipient of the Nobel prize in literature makes me wonder whether Kanndasan's body of work would easily surpass Dylan's contributions.  I am no Kannadasan expert, nor am I a Dylan expert, but ... Or, up in the Hindi belt, there is Gulzar.  Maybe it is time to retire the Nobel in literature and peace ... but, I digress.

Poets and poetry and emotions.  I was reminded of all these because I listened to two poetry/music related segments on my favorite radio station.  One was an interview with Phil Collins, whose concluding words in the interview says a lot about the human condition:

my life's the same as everybody else's, you know. You're making it up every day and you're just hoping you're making the right decisions.

That's all there is.  Maybe, as my grandmother often prefaced in her prayers, we hope to wake up.  And after we wake up, all we can do is to hope that we make the right decisions.

The other poetry/music segment was about a Lebanese composer/poet/musician/... Of course, I had no idea about him; I am amazed everyday at how much I do not know!

Marcel Khalife is a Lebanese composer, singer and innovator on his instrument, the oud. Khalife performed his first concerts amid the rubble of bombed-out buildings in Beirut during Lebanon's civil war. Now, decades later, he is one of the most prolific figures in Arabic music.

It was a review of his latest album, "Andalusia Of Love."  If you are like me, you perhaps wonder why a Lebanese is fascinated with Andalusia, which is all the way over in Spain.  Here's why:

Andalusia is the southern part of Spain where Muslims, Jews and Christians lived together for centuries during medieval times. For Khalife, that history is an enduring reminder that peaceful cohabitation is possible for people of these faiths.

What a lovely fascination to have, right?  The coexistence before the expulsion of Jews and before Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition.  Despite his experiences of the brutal life in Lebanon during its atrocious civil war days, here is Khalife passionately believing that peaceful cohabitation is possible.

There's more:

Khalife himself is a Christian, but throughout his career he has set to music the words of a Muslim writer, Mahmoud Darwish, one of the most beloved Palestinian poets.

I spent a few minutes reading a few poems by Mahmoud Darwish.  I liked the poem that I have included at the end of this post, maybe because I could understand it the most.

Artists and poets, I envy them so!
Artists and poets, I thank them so.

I belong there
By Mahmoud Darwish

I belong there. I have many memories. I was born as everyone is born.
I have a mother, a house with many windows, brothers, friends, and a prison cell
with a chilly window! I have a wave snatched by seagulls, a panorama of my own.
I have a saturated meadow. In the deep horizon of my word, I have a moon,
a bird’s sustenance, and an immortal olive tree.
I have lived on the land long before swords turned man into prey.
I belong there. When heaven mourns for her mother, I return heaven to     her mother.
And I cry so that a returning cloud might carry my tears.
To break the rules, I have learned all the words needed for a trial by blood.
I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a  
single word: Home.