Udyanarakshakara Gita (The Garden-keeper’s Song)

I have been warned, instructed
no flowers are to be plucked,
no fruits are to be picked,
no lovers’ rendezvous is to open the gate and enter,
no plait of hair is to be adorned,
no hunger satisfied.

I am helpless,
strong with the strength of others.
I open the gate with care,
close it with care,
make my rounds in the garden and return
when the sun returns to its blood.
Swallowing a heavy dose of harsh obligation
I go to sleep.
It will be late, very late
before I am freed.

There is no freedom even in sleep.
Now a hand throws a stone and then
a rustle in the dry leaves
reaches my ears from the Nairuta.
Now in the Aisanya
face like the face of a fairy
flares up and fades into the dark,
and then the pressures of the cold wind
surround my neck.
I could never learn
the skill of taming them.

I have no friends, relatives, family.
The skills of keeping alive
are provided to me
in the faint sounds made by trees
as they grow, blossom, bear fruit—
sounds quite capable
of resisting wind and rain
that threaten to throw them out.

My friends are only those
who floated ahead of or behind me
in the sea of the dark.
I don’t know how many they are.
I’ve heard they are three.
Often I feel I am one of them.
If ever a strange planet leads me by the nose
and I become oblivious of myself,
they too are not there.
These days, however,
I hardly can forget I am,

for the spring here is eternal
leaves, flowers, fruits eternal
the hum of bees eternal
the robust dream of blood eternal
the upward climb of flesh eternal
ecstatic movement of bones eternal.
For, in this garden,
I’ve buried my dead friends.

The other lives
in the village beyond the kia bushes.
worldly-wise, proud of a host of sons and grandsons.
Only a gunblast can send him to sleep.
Playing my flute all afternoon through,
I have been waiting for his arrival.
Will he ever come, but why?
Can we once again float
in the sea beyond our circle,
beyond our identities?

Soubhagya Kumar Misra

show how joyous poetry is

The courage to live like a wound that never heals…I remember that. It’s very typical of me and my poetry because I want to make the reader laugh — and cry. I want to make the reader go into the unconscious and then show how joyous poetry is, but then you have to live like a wound that never heals in order to write it.

Erica Jong
Poet to Poet Practice: A Conversation with Erica Jong; Kim Dower interviews Erica Jong
Los Angeles Review of Books 19th December 2018

the world drops dead

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again.

Sylvia Plath
The Bell Jar

arrogant toward women

No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.

Simone de Beauvoir
The Second Sex

Love

I am still in love with her. Not a day breaks but that I think of her, and when the dogwood turns red in winter I stretch out my hands and imagine her hair. I am in love with her, not a fantasy or a myth or a creature of my own making. Her. A person who is not me.

Jeanette Winterson
The passion

all around there’s silence

You come home, make some tea, sit down in your armchair and all around there’s silence. Everyone decides for themselves whether that’s loneliness or freedom.