I’m happy to be sharing another poem by Pash on Poetly today. Few days ago, serendipously, I ended up chosing his Ghaas to share on the celebration of a victory in the farmers’ protest.
This poem, however, hasn’t been chosen by me, but by Arushi Vats, who has written today’s guest post. Arushi has been a follower of Poetly for some time now, and her meaningful and sensitive responses in the past have helped enrich the scope of the posts I share here. Her sense of wonder while engaging with texts is infectious, and it truly comes through in the post.
I continue to marvel at the way this space births collaborations and connections with people who have never met, but share a common love for poetry and the arts. This is a gift, really.
Without further ado, then:
If there’s a poem that’s tucked into the pockets of my heart, it is सपने (Dreams) by Pash. The conceit of the poem is simple: not everyone receives the gift that is the experience of dreaming. But from that kernel emerges a complex reading of how many meanings a word can hold within itself—the very lure and magic of language. Dreams is a study in imagery, of how often we resort to picturing as an act of transference or connection with another. Or how often meanings emanate from the composition of distinct elements in a considered order as an act of imaging. Santee Frazier calls this gesture the creation of ‘potent word pictures’, where the meaning of the word image itself is expanded. In an interview with Journal of Working Class Studies, he clarifies: ‘I think the image should always be accessible, giving the reader a clear experience through their senses. I don't believe the image is just a visual reference. An image exists in sound and touch and texture.’ It is to free the image from the dominance of singular sight—something situated in the faculty we hold as individuals—to a force that is composed together in the commons, a land on which anyone can tread. I think of this image in सपने: बेजान बारूद. A lifeless gunpowder. A force that is latent or lost; a potency that could still be but isn’t yet, or has been hushed from possibility altogether. I think of how Pash uses the word ‘asleep’ to describe this dormancy—suggesting the possibility of awakening, an end to the slumber. Pash is drawing us towards the binary of action and passivity, but qualifying these with dimensions. A book untouched, an arm raised in violence—both enact a refusal of what it could mean to live in a world with a beating, thumping heart; to live with a fullness of feeling. To Pash, that is action: cradled within but purported outward, always occurring in the bridge between a sleeping body and its wakeful heart, both drenched in the light of the world.
To dream one must relinquish their bruised muscles to the embrace of sleep, one must hold possible all that remains vibrant in the shadow of despair. To dream may be a gift one receives, but dreaming is a gift that one gives to their epoch, lands and people.
Arushi Vats writes on arts and culture. Her writing has been published on online platforms such as MARCH: a journal of art & strategy, Alternative South Asia Photography, The Karachi Collective, LSE International History, Critical Collective. Her short stories are published in nether Quarterly, The Gulmohar Quarterly and Hakara Journal; poetry is forthcoming in PIX Quarterly.
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