ANOTHER OZYMANDIAS

The centre couldn’t hold such unnatural grace

Flowing fast  from above.

So fell the fort.

The fort of false pride, arrogance and lies

Fell flat, bulldozed to be made mild.

The image of the self-acclaimed

Righteous lord of the wild

Was pulled down from the pedestal

Wonderfully well in a calculated move

And his bust so cleverly sculpted

To proclaim his unchallenged authority

Crumbled into dust and was humbled.

For success in high places merit counts,

Not the springboard of some special privilege

That which provides only with an opportunity,

But doesn’t guarantee greatness or dignity.

The mass holds the class in high esteem

So long as the scepter stands for common good

And enjoys trust.

History repeats itself for those whimsical idiots

Who refuse to learn from their past,

And power blind, slip into the gutter of greed

And succumb to the sickness of some foolish deed.

That such thing would happen to him,

He did not know. He did not imagine

That the Bastille would break open

And those who had so long been denied a voice

Would come around swarming like bees

From all sides, sting him and strike vocal

And some of them point their fingers at him.

The imposing autocrat who was proud of his wild ways

And talked high of his stock, would get testaments

Written for him, downplay his subordinates

And use them for narrow personal gains.

He enjoyed befooling his own folk

With his pseudo elitist image

As much as he enjoyed good wine and his harem women,

All on public money, all in the name

Of culture and tradition.

So much assured he was of his authority

That he took his words to be sacrosanct

And his signature the regal seal,

Which sanctified each decree that came from his chamber.

He signed and signed and loved imposing fines

Which were irrationally increased each passing hour

And were enough to blow his bastion or banish him.

Poor Prince! After a desperate attempt to prove

His point, all in vain, he withdrew to the wilderness

In quest of another Kautilya who might be waiting

For an umbrella in some safe haven.

On The Death of Poetry

O N   T H E   D E A T H   O F   P O E T R Y

I don’t know when, where and why,

But it happened.

The most unfortunate thing that can

Ever happen in life, has happened.

Call it suicide, stupid homicide

Or cold blooded murder

By somebody mad and bad,

Poetry has been killed sometime somewhere.

The corpse is yet to be recovered.

The grave has no mark.

The indelible accusation

Spreads everywhere in the dark.

Only the smell of the dead and nausea,

The corpse bearers’ whispering voice,

Blames and burdens keen to pass

Surround home and the nativity.

Can any holy escape grant me a moment

Of pure freedom,

A moment of fulfillment and joy

If there is no warmth of involvement?

Caged in the close privacy of our hell where only

Distrust and dishonesty dwell in dispassionate prosaic reality,

Life without poetry, like tasteless time,

 Is dry discordant movement without rhythm.

THE TRAFFIC

                                                 

INTRODUCTION  TO  “THE  TRAFFIC”

This long poem consists of eight sections. It was written in 1975, exactly ten years after I started writing in English. At that time I was doing my Post Graduation in English at Ravenshaw College (now a university), Cuttack in Odisha, my home state in India.

Those were the days when T.S. Eliot, Yeats, Sartre, Camus, Kafka, Beckett, Dostoevski and Whitman dominated our literary consciousness. Jayanta Mahapatra’s success as a major Indo-English Poet and his Chicago Poetry Prize was the talk of the town at the College Square. Ravenshaw Campus had another powerful Indo-English Poet of repute, Deba Patnaik, who along with Jayanta Mahapatra was included in Pritish Nandi’s selection of Indian Poetry in English released in 1973. Bibhu Padhi had just joined as a faculty member in the English Department. There were many others writing in English. Prof. Premananda Mishra used to write intensely passionate poetry addressed to his Dark Angel. The atmosphere was bustling with creative writing both in Odia and English. Niranjan Mahanty, Santa Acharya, and Haraprasad Parichha Patnaik were prominent among the students in the English Department. Both H.P.Patnaik and Deepak Mishra were editing two little literary magazines in English, Probitas  and Zephirus respectively.

There was regular release of Phoenix, our Departmental Wall Magazine which motivated the students. Our beloved Professor, Dr.Sarbeswar Das inspired us immensely with his deep scholarly insight, seriousness and his poetic eloquence. He was teaching us Eliot’s Four Quartets at the time. Listening to him gave us immense pleasure as he used to transport us to the beautiful world of poetry and the rich store house of both Indian and Western thoughts beginning from Patanjali to Pascal and Bergson.

             
Eliot’s “The Waste Land” inspired experiments in almost all contemporary literatures. But my unwillingness to be in a   decadent culture, the changing world scenario, my Indian sensibility, the dying flames of Vietnam War, Green Revolution,  the emergence of India as a powerful nation and its efforts to    promote peace, and the vision of a more beautiful world prompted  me to write  “The Traffic” which reflects European objectivity and Indian optimism in the midst of suffering and loss, since it is our firm faith in positive nothingness that keeps us going. I have done a little more work on the poem, not changing the basic things.

 Bipin Patsani     
 _______________________________________________

T H E   T R A F F I C                                  

                                                          - BIPIN   PATSANI

              “Wish me good speed,

                For I am going into a wilderness

                Where I shall find nor path,

                Nor friendly clue to be my guide”.

                                  ( The Duchess of Malfi )

                                                          _ J.Webster  

                                   I            

The drum beats hard.

We are on board

Talking of the inevitable

Amidst fire, thunder and threat,

While our hunger for the unforeseen

And thirst for more of what we relish

Carry us forward.

In a distant vale plays Orpheus*

On his forlorn flute.

“Beware of dogs,” reads the gate.

Won’t she come out?

The drum beats,

Harder beats the drum.

Is it from the Parade Ground**

Or from the Peace Pagoda***?

Marching from Morocco into Spanish Sahara

For the peaceful invasion of the desert,

Yet doubtful always of the peace

Anticipating a violent confrontation,

Here you are man, moon walking for a dream

With confidence, but confused at home,

Here like blind Gloucester**** trapped in a ring,

You shall not know if you have fallen

In some dark infernal abyss.

You are in a fix man,

Choose between the tiger and the stream.

 ________________________________________

*Orpheus was a Greek musician who, unable to bear the loss of his wife Eurydice, came to the underworld in search of her and met the ferocious dog Cerberus at the gate of Pluto, the god of death.

** Police Parade Ground at Bhubaneswar in ODISHA, INDIA.

***Peace Pagoda: a Buddhist monument at Dhauli Hill near Bhubaneswar where the Kalinga War had taken place.

****Gloucester is a miserable character in Shakespeare’s King Lear.

                                                  II

 They double speak, speak double

When it comes to their interests.

Where the mightiest are the keepers

Of conscience, all their actions

With the stamp of sophistry

Have the conviction of being just and sweet;

While those of others, like the proactive

Concern of gods when someone below

Strives for the dignity of higher planes,

Seem to be deadly, fit only to be curbed

Or killed in their pre-emptive strike.

Which sands are you looking for?

Don’t you know the sands here?

Here one who lusts

For the wanton

Shall have no peace.

He who fares

Without feeling

Shall have no bliss.

He who lacks

Love and compassion

Shall perish.

What depth do you dive in to?

Dive deep. Dive deep if you are to know

What beauty is there in a leap.

                                        III

So hopeless and horrible they look;

Bones piling up on the deck,

Smell of stale human flesh

And hearts hanging on the mast,

Slow sails dark in the sea

“The Raft of the Medusa “

Stripped of all affiliation,

Crawling parents quarrelling

For the blood of their son.

Where is the Captain

Who boasted of being the master of the sea?

Who is the master? “O Captain! My Captain!”

                                 

                                      IV

While poking the garbage

With an eager enthusiastic finger,

She found all at once

What we all sought after.

She shrieked with laughter,

That mad woman, she seemed to have found him.

She wept. She smiled and wept again,

Unable to do away with the jumbled up feelings

 Of so much of happiness

And the sorrow of missing him for so long.

Now that she found him, she could not restrain.

Keeping down the bundle of rotten fruits

And felicity, she stood up arms stretching upwards

And ran down dancing in the street,

Singing some loose inconsistent songs

That came to her in the rain.

She got deep into the water,

As the blue rhythmic ripples

Of its beauty invited her.

She laid her lips on its warmth

And rubbing to it in passionate intensity,

Lowered herself down to its body

To  swim in the melody of its infinitude.

She hugged the flow, kissed it and ate it all,

Legs beating; head, thighs and belly

 Throbbing at ease like a fish,

Throbbing and writhing in ecstasy.

When she came out all wet and absorbed,

Came out pregnant and pure, like Leda,

She saw no river, nothing else,

But an invisible image of beauty

And freshness finding way into her.

____________________________________________

(This section is based on an actual scene I witnessed
at the old Bus Stand in Khurda Town (in Odisha) in 1975 
when this poem was in progress.)

                                           V

O if I could know

That myself I did not know!

If I could have heard

The song of flux and flow in life,

I would not have gone so far in the dark.

Alien in my own country,

Into drab nothingness I poke my nose

The way monkeys poke their wounds,

 And out of nothing comes nothing

Killing me each time I look around.

O come and be my beginning,

The one veritable affirmation

To which I may add my emptiness,

 My zero, as many times as I like.

O come and be my love.

“Dhirasamire Yamunatire”*

I shall wait for you,

I shall wait there in the full-moon night.

_________________________________________

*in the gentle breeze on the bank of The Yamuna
  (from Jaidev’s GITA GOVIND )

                                                 

                                                  

                                                     VI

                                                      F                                                                                                                                

                                T H E  S A C R E D  W O O D                    

                                                     O

                                                     M                                                                                                                                        

                                                     O   

                                                     F

                                                     T

                                                     H

                                                     E

                                                     C

                                                     R

                                                     O

                                                     S

                                                     S

Sweet melody fountains as from the flute.

Sweet melody descends everywhere like doves.

Catch them, catch them and despatch

Everywhere the message of love.

Don’t  run after arms friends,

Shun violence.

No watchman of the grave,

Come Duryodhan, shun arrogance

And see how powerful the wand of love is;

See how it humbles the proud, humbles nations.

O if you could see!

See the dying flames in war zones,

See Vietnam and smile.

Come, let all the flags of the world

Join in one open carnival.

C  O M M A N D M E N T S

He who learns to give

Sees no scarcity,

What so ever.

He, who learns

To be sad for others,

Forgets his own sorrow.

He, who loves,

Forgets all about himself

And catches the cosmic beauty,

While a quiet transparent

Music of peace

Attune the heart.

TAT TVAM ASI,

You are fire and water,

I said to me,

You are earth, air and space,

The hidden wonder asleep within,

 Waiting to unfold grace.

T H E  U N H E A R D  M E L O D Y

When there is no voice but chaos,

In your voice

And in the silent awakening

Of a brazen universe

Warm in your embrace,

I vibrate the voiceless multitudes.

They call it The Word.

They call it Harmony

And The Gravitation.

It is LOVE

“That moves the Sun and all the stars”

And binds everything in one cosmic scheme.

Cras  amet qui nunquam amvit

Quique  amvit cras amet.*

Love redeems

The world within you

And all worlds.

*taken from a famous Latin verse “Pervigilium Veneris”
(The  Vigil of Venus) written in 350 b.c. and its authorship is unknown.
 “cras amet …” :Tomorrow let him love who has never loved,
 and let him who has loved love tomorrow.

                                  

                                        VII

Each movement has a meaning at the core.

Love, loss, gain, stillness and the storm,

All are components of the highest order,

Where each unit adds to its august anthem.

Why are we worried  

If a new mode comes on its own?

Awake man, be not scared of thorns.

The lonely and untrodden path you tread

May become a mark, a path to go beyond,

And the momentary pleasure or pain

Will just be passing trees or tunnel

Running back to oblivion.

Come out of inertia and inhibition,                                                          

Come man, water your forgotten green.

It is not your dispassionate will;

What matters is the spark

That helps to revel even in the dark.

No matter how much sighs we emit,

The world will never lose its lustre,

Nor remove its store of plain.

Let us not be of the forbidden type

And refuse the very nature of life.

We may go anywhere we like,

But we must feel free

To catch each voice that comes

 So that we may have the ear for that,

We may hear that sweet symphony

We have been missing all these years

Owing to our thirst for importance and money.

The soul then will return to the source

And merge in the music of its divine force.

                               VIII

The drum beats.

The tiger sees himself in the stream.

He who drinks blood,

Also drinks deep from the fountain.

Maybe, in each battle field

There can be a Peace Pagoda

Like the one in Kalinga.

What is there on the other shore?

Do you not hear

“The silent thunder diffused”

 In the waves?                                

Do you not feel its varied spasms?

What is there I do not know.

What is there?

Like you,

I am also waiting for some fresh wind,

Keeping the window open.

            ___________                          

              
 From my poetry collection ‘HOMECOMING’ (Poems: 1975-1991)

     Published by Wordsmith Publishers, Guwahati, India / 2010

 About the poet:

Bipin Patsani (b.1951) is an Indian Poet in English from Odisha. His poems have been published in many prestigious literary journals and poetry anthologies including Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi), Indian Scholar (Raipur), The Journal of Indian Writing in English (Gulbarga), Chandrabhaga (Cuttack), Kavya Bharati (Madurai), The Brown Critique (New Delhi), Commonwealth Literature, Poets International (Bangalore), Metverse Muse (Visakhapatnam), Poetcrit (Maranda), Kafla (Chandigarh), Bridge-in-Making (Kolkata), Fantasy (Allahabad), Skylark(Aligarh), Rock Pebbles(Jajpur), Replica(Cuttack), Poesie India(Bhubaneswar), Poetry Time, Voices (Berhampur), The Heart Of The Millennium (Sussex, U.K.), International Poetry (IWA, Bluffton, U.S.A),Prophetic Voices (California, U.S.A.), Ballads Of Our Time (ILP, U.S.A.), Extasis Poeticos (Spain), Anthology of Indian Poetry (Athens, Greece), Indo-Asian Literature (Delhi),Indian Book Chronicle (Jaipur), New Global Voice (Bangalore) and Explorers (Allahabad).

His first poetry collection VOICE OF THE VALLEY was published by Writers Workshop, Kolkata in 1993. His second poetry collection   “ANOTHER VOYAGE” and the third collection “HOMECOMING” have been published by Wordsmith Publishers, Guwahati, India in 2010. He is a recipient of Michael Madhusudan Award/1996. Some of his poems have been translated into Spanish and Portuguese. He has manuscript ready for two more collections.

Bipin Patsani was born at Badatota, a village near Khurda in Odisha, India. He has been writing poems in English since his high school days when he was a student of K.C.Vidyapith, Janla near Bhubaneswar. He graduated with English Honours in 1973 from P.N. Mahavidyalaya, Khurda (Utkal University) and did Post Graduation in English at Ravenshaw College (now a university), Cuttack. He has been working as a teacher in Arunachal Pradesh since 1978 and lives there with his wife Manju, daughters Monalisa and Manisha and son Amaresh.  

email: bipinp25@yahoo.in