A few days ago, Poetry Foundation shared this poem by Dorianne Laux:
Enough Music
Sometimes, when we're on a long drive,
and we've talked enough and listened
to enough music and stopped twice,
once to eat, once to see the view,
we fall into this rhythm of silence.
It swings back and forth between us
like a rope over a lake.
Maybe it's what we don't say
that saves us.
(What We Carry, BOA Editions, 1994)
I could not miss a poem whose title stood there, with bells on, like that. I read it and smiled, like that lurker at a wedding buffet who has just tasted the chatpata alu starter and is thinking of changing cuisines. I know this kind of poem. It’s what I call an ‘afterthought poem’. At least for me, this particular kind of short lyric slips out of the pen, perhaps after an intense session writing about an event or a moment of some heft. It is also like the last piece at an Indian classical recital by a maestro. The artist has finished playing the main raag and now there are about 20 minutes left, not long enough for an entire alaap and bandish, so there is a beautiful compromise, the artist gives a taste- a 20 minute alaap, which stays with only the slowest speed, but nevertheless explores the entire raag with slow precision, and spontaneous poise. I’ve often felt that it is that piece that is more fresh, more meaningful than even the main piece. It has been sitting there waiting in the side street of the mind. It always has a ‘maybe’. It is more tentative, immersive, and at the end, the poet emerges, eyes closed, prophet-like, a pearl diver with the jewel in their grasp.
Of course, I did not stop at one, I devoured a few more of her poems before resting on another one about music on a long drive.
(Smoke, BOA Editions, 2000)
Every time I’ve read this poem in the last few days, I play the remastered version of Led Zep’s official audio of ‘Stairway to Heaven’, turning it into a series of readings stretched to a good eight minutes, with multiple crescendos. By now I’m a fan of Laux, I like her straightforward narrative style, dropping catastrophic truths with the nazakat of a flickering flame in a corridor with a jaali. Poetry Foundation aptly describes her as a “compassionate witness to the everyday”, and I find that her writing always has its ear to the ground. There is humility and certainty, and the precarious power of one who knows truth through personal experience. I listened to a few of her talks online, and she embodied this approach of gratitude for the gift of words that she is always sharing with a smile. There was no unnecessary sophistry or make-believe in her conversation. She talks, more than once, of her pianist mother, and of the music of poetry, and I promise you, you will be in love if you listen to her for long enough. For me, the covenant was sealed, when, yesterday I read her “Antilamentation”.
I have been channelling rage for a few days now. At various things that aren’t really in my control. It is alright to be angry at such things - the state of the world, the emptiness of artists whose work betrays a fullness, the inaction of the wise, and the disappointment with idols. Sometimes it turns to regret too, but then Laux’s words held me close and kissed my forehead, before whispering… Regret nothing.
(The Book of Men, W.W. Norton & Co., 2011)
If you like the work I’m doing here, do consider ‘buying me a coffee’.
Note: Those, not in India, who’d like to support the work I do at Poetly, do write to me - poetly@pm.me.
Spread the word, do forward this to your loved ones. Subscribe if you are seeing this anywhere else, other than your inbox. Jiyo, muskurao, Kush Raho.. Kal ho na ho ;)