every morning the world cracks open. and the sun spills out like yolk. all runny and smiling, pleased with itself. Sunburst, really. laughter pretending to be light. every morning i get up early just so that i can witness the world becoming new again. so that i can see the city cleaning up quietly, after itself; and catch the day as it hides the residue of its night of revelry. this is the time of day i like best,/ and this the hour/when i can call this city my own…
before I have to surrender it to its so-called masters.
people can be disappointing.
things, on the other hand are more sensitive. more generous. i used to think poetry was a way of becoming more human, more emotional. but things have taught me that there is something deeper than emotion, and a state of no emotion is not necessarily devoid of feeling; not necessarily cold. perhaps this is what the vates meant when they talked about the silence of thought. but even that idea is human - it is ‘man-made’. the world has a way of teaching you silence without ever reminding you of its mentorship. when the student is ready the teacher appears. when the teacher is ready, the student disappears. because they know better…
a man walks down a road. his footsteps are heavy from a night of slow turning. his mind is still active, disturbed by a morning dream. his head is a dark, stuffy room, swirling with the smoke of his troubles. his body moves, but his heart is still. trying to form a picture. a plan. something that could indicate the future. is this anxiety? the inability to visualise the next moment? the next day? a dream, perhaps? every morning he walks like this. every day’s an endless stream of cigarettes and magazines. but no, he had quit, he thinks to himself and smiles. at that moment the sun falls on his shoulders, and he can feel the warmth. it is drizzling ever so slightly. a rainbow! but the rain has other ideas, other destinations. he smiles again, as he sees a clean line of dry road, right ahead, where the monsoon has shied away.
he is feeling lighter now. his steps follow each other with practised haste. he gets a first glimpse of it as he is about to reach his favourite coffee joint - the tuluva who opens his shop earlier then the rest. his subconscious is preoccupied with seeking out the familiarity of routine, so he doesn’t notice it immediately. but then, when he is right in the middle of it. he looks down at his feet. and stops. his eyes take in the sight.
a host of golden copper-pods. a yellow poinciana carpet. like morningstars pinned in place by the moist wind. he stood there like a fool. his eyes, caressing each petal, marvelling at the ones that the morning broke - and they were more beautiful because of their imperfection. words came to his lips, but went back rejected. the yellow flowers were ochre with spent desire. staining the wet city streets. A human being shouldn’t become so spotless./ One should leave a few stains on one’s shirt. One should carry on oneself a little bit of sin.
a litt bit of sin.
in my blinkered imaginarium, those flowers - their time in the sun, finished - had been hurtling towards this end. their surrender was selfless. they were strewn in a kind of sacred geometry. their chaos, like a breughel painting turned colour and landscape into a riot of sensation, and I felt my whole body quiver like the string of a bow. the laughter came unbidden, shooting through dawn’s quiet like an arrow without a destination. i felt, in my blood, the peace of wild things.
i felt,
poetry.
poetry, is not really about emotion, it is about sensation. its beginning is human, but its end is non-human. (they call it posthuman these days but i prefer a clean break from the human condition). this is the secret of the everyday, which is folded into the ordinary, like a yellowflame petal in a young man’s first book of poems.
this vignette is not some arbitrary creative exercise. i felt this at many moments throughout the last month. first, in the hills, then in the city, and finally, in a forest. where a person could get lost - what is that line about there being some clearings in the forest that can only be found by one who is truly lost? (do write to me with the exact line if you recall - I think it’s from a Milosz poem) well, i have been lost. i have learnt to love the unpredictability of that silence. it has taught me empathy.
we know nothing about empathy. we love speaking about it, but the self is a stain we can’t wash clean.
when does it become alright to tell someone to do something? to smother them with ‘care’? to teach? to advice? I often think that it is never alright. flowers know this. as do the hills. and the lampposts. even the broom that sweeps up the brown leaves and fallen flowers in the morning knows it.
wislawa knew this.
when i started writing this commentary I wasn’t planning to pay homage to wislawa. but then love creeps in. always. the morning spills onto the page as poetry. i’m surprised, actually, that i’ve not shared her most famous poem on this platform before. i think i never really understood it properly before today, to be honest. some things become clearer when you write about them.
View with a grain of sand has often been touted as an embodiment of the poet’s ‘ecological’ wisdom. It is the sensibility towards nature that critics write about - and by extension, her inhabiting, and enlightened view of, the human condition. But why should the non-human not include human-made things? What about the urban environment? What about the plastic Nandini milk packet amidst the yellow-flame flowers? What about the broken window wiper, and the soiled ace of hearts by the gutter? What about the car in Ajantrik, and the communist sickle?
Something beautiful happens when we shift the gaze; when we let the self dissolve enough to learn empathy with the things around us. As I write about objects, places, shops, monuments, streets, buildings, concrete blocks, petrol rainbows, and the many things we refuse that clutter the garbage dumps of the city, I become aware of how innumerable my influences really are. Even music, in its purest form of sensory excess - sound - is non-human. A koyal’s cheep blending in seamlessly with the sound of a JCB warming up is as much a part of this city’s becoming, as the great girders that hang around metro construction sites.
Writing about the way these things make and unmake the everyday teaches me about the force of the inanimate. In fact that descriptor is a misnomer. the flowers animate my freedom, my song. they turn a quiet morning walk into a miracle fair. and for that, I am grateful.
Feel free to mail poetly@pm.me with any questions, queries, or comments. I will write back as soon as I find the space, and the time.
If you like what you read, do consider ‘buying me a coffee’.