TRES POEMAS DE INDRAN AMIRTHANAYAGAM
Poets Among Us
There are poets who take you for a ride,
from which you will not come back alive,
who dazzle with incense and myrrh,
who think sound trumps all sense
or reports of explosions beyond
the garden fence. There are poets
who write lines and pauses
keeping time to a metronome,
who are esteemed versifiers,
gathering in clubs to compose haikus,
or falling in love with the ghazal
and renga, those elegant Oriental pursuits.
There are poets who will be rewarded
by politicians, talk show hosts and
Rotary, Lions or the Theosophists.
Happened in America once,
a poet read, his hair flaying white,
at the inauguration of a president.
Started a trend and a decade. Poetry
is not far removed from the state
of the nation. Its words make
metaphors, are crafted in stanzas
and books. Poets are self-ordained
but depend on kind strangers
and friends to break bread
at their mass, stopping on pages
to read before heading out
into night or day, to work or play,
to announce, we have rhymes
to share with you, chocolates
for all, a few barbed we admit
with nails, to jolt the conscience,
not send us to the grave. Will you
listen, please, take off your shoes?
Indran Amirthanayagam, July 30, 2012
Breathing Stats, Olympics
Some sour puss in the British
government, a rotting apple
chucked out perhaps
from the kitchen at Number 10,
Downing Street, has released
reports about ozone concentrates
over southern England
to coincide with the first salvos
of the Olympic Games.
When the world is staring
at British-style nurses dancing
at the Opening Ceremony,
we read that athletes
will have trouble breathing,
that excess of nitrogen
dioxide and other pollutants—
far more, curiously,
than in Beijing which
stopped nearby industry
for the Games’ duration,
an option unavailable
to the free capitalist--
along with the expected
heat wave, will cause
asthma attacks and
hardly a world record.
Just imagine
the Olympics to come
over the rest of time,
wheezing and coughing
before sputtering
out of starting blocks.
Now, I understand
you would rather I stop
writing and just watch
the athletics, but as we wait
also for our party conventions
every four years, I ask
you fellow Americans
and democrats, and all
other readers through
the free internet, shall
we make believe, or deliver
a few, hard to smoke,
certainly inconvenient truths?
Indran Amirthanayagam, July 28, 2012
Grief
There are no words, one
expects to say, but get
your family together,
pray and break bread.
When the neighbor dies
the same, keep your heart
open to include his relatives
and country. To spend time
mourning we would have
no other activity. This is
the koan--no other ripe
conclusion from the public
and private grief; yesterday
shooting of people
in the cinema in Aurora,
not the brilliant Borealis,
lights dazzling eyes,
but pops and zings from
the murderer's guns, and
today’s news, grandfather dead,
and you on a bus going back
to the city, everybody jostling
aboard with stories, griefs
and joys, you say that life
is shit, I agree, until
we roll out of the mud,
get up and wash our bodies
and calm our minds, remember
how he woke up in the morning
to take his tea, the stories
he told us of the deep country,
what we carry together
from him and Aurora, lights
snuffed out, burning temporarily
in this poem, our memory.
Indran Amirthanayagam, July 24, 2012
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