“I climb the mountain of the moment”
It is not easy to speak about ‘loss’ or ‘pain’. It is ironic that the darkness of human emotion, the underside of experience, often becomes a whetstone for art. We learn to feel by giving it a name. But the artist changes with the retelling. The narrative transforms the narrator, and, in turn, the reader. It is difficult to separate craft from “content” in work that emerges from such intimate, poignant, and often disorienting, experiences. I have slowly adjusted my lens to not seek “truth” in such work. I believe that imprisoning poems with the demand for honesty becomes a way of gaslighting the poet.
I consider the question “Did it happen this way? REALLY?” a dangerous question to pose to artists. That is not the purpose of art - we are not in the business of, say, journalism, or documentary filmmaking. In those domains, there is the burden of “fact checking”, at least more than there is in poetry.
The truth of experience in such poems lies in the truth of feeling.
The poem I share with you today, by Vinita Agrawal, stems from a deeply personal experience. I was struck by the force of feeling that I experienced when I first read it. The poetry of unexpected emotions seeps into the material reality that the poet unfurls in snatches. I found myself climbing “the mountain of the moment” with the writer, feeling every inch of despair, futility and shock… The final volta is particularly poignant, seamlessly slipping into a contemplative mode, without compromising on the hectic fear that punctuates the language throughout.
The Backstory
- Vinita AgrawalStroke is a poem that’s very close to my heart. On the 30th of July 2015, my father, who lived alone in Anand, called me at seven in the morning to say that he’d had a fall at home and that he could barely swallow. He had managed to open the front door somehow and called the neighbours who helped him to get an ambulance and admit him to a hospital. I was distraught beyond words to hear this. I lived in Mumbai then and left by the first available train to Anand. Still, it was 9 at night by the time I reached the hospital. The prognosis was bad. The doctors confirmed that he’d suffered a stroke. Thankfully he was able to speak despite being paralysed waist down. He told me all that had happened that morning. I remember telling him, ‘No more living alone, Daddy. You have to move in with us now. Once you come out of this we’re going to Mumbai for good. Little did I know then that his condition would worsen that night, that he would lapse into a coma and would pass away twenty seven days later. He emerged from the coma only twice and each time he recognised me and gave me the most beatific smile, only to slip back into coma minutes later.
The poem is born from these real life events that rocked my life. I tried to hold my emotions in check as I wrote the piece - it’s not easy to write about our loved ones especially if the poem is about losing them. I ended up revising and rewriting the poem several times over before I settled for this version. It was deeply validating when Proverse nominated it with a special mention in their Proverse poetry competition 2022.
I am honoured to be sharing Agrawal’s poetry on Poetly. I know her as a poet, but also as one of the editors of The Yearbook of Indian Poetry, and as Poetry Editor of Usawa Literary Journal (whose latest issue, by the way, has some scintillating poetry).
I hope you are doing well, and this winter is kind. If you like what you read, do consider ‘buying me a coffee’.
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