Archives for December, 2004

the day of, my father got lost driving twice.

This man was made homeless by the waves and lives now in a temporary shelter in a mosque in Nagore, Tamil Nadu, India.
He is crying and there is blood in his mouth.
His skin is the same colour as my father’s.

And it was at that age…Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don’t know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating planations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesmal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke free on the open sky.

-Pablo Neruda

Chem 281, Chem 211, and some Commerce class are neatly packed into the arena-come-exam hall. procters stand at attention and everyone is able to quietly find a seat. hopefully the right one.

the microphone crackles. “commerce students, note that in question 23, on page 5, it shouldn’t be n = one, but n = one million.”
a low ripple of laughter and then 60 seconds later, pencils gripped hard, we’re at it.
for three hours there is almost is silence.

“there are 20 minutes left.”
there is a sound of blank spaces being filled in feverishly – anything to fight the emptiness. and there is the sound of surrender, of vast white spaces snickering snidely, untouched by charcoal.

afterwards, we dribble out out into the night. a girl is half-crying; she looks almost like she’s laughing, but there are tears and red eyes and a runny nose.
it begins to hail.