A War Poem
Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a thousand faces
is a war hero, overcoming personal and historical
limits to win a battle, to realise a spiritual goal;
to reach the source where all resolves,
where permanence is found, self and society reborn.
If the goal is Homeric there are no limits to reaching it,
no limits to obstacles, trials, human suffering
for the journey is an eagle’s flight
from the personal to the transpersonal
from a thieving shifting ego
to the steady flame of egolessness.
If there are fiery demons at every crossing
there are mentors to guide the adventurer
on a searing journey riven by human suffering.
If freedom is the goal, democracy is an outfall
worth preserving for it brings dignity and voice
to a society desperately looking for democratic heroes
in a world where unjourneyed leaders, democratically elected
halt the wheel, compelling a stasis of passionless conformism
in a passionate vortex of rising authoritarian power.
Repeat
The same thought…
A woodpecker hammering in the day
An owl sleepless in the night.
I am not good enough
appears even in reports officially submitted
where a single point repeats itself in a slurry
of words, not sharp as nails, one for each issue,
hammered in the coffin, sealing it sharply
but slurry — wet, vacuous, hapless.
The repetition feels like autism except that there is
communication, social response, even action controlled.
The owl craves food at night, not from hunger
but from a quality of missingness
of love; of light.
Despite the logic of obesity, tooth decay, dyspepsia, insomnia…
too many thoughts repeating themselves
volatile, violent….
much like the violence I see
outside.
Recovery
When despondency worked like glue into her entrails
She tried pulling out her entrails with her hands but
ended up pulling at the sun and the stars and the moon
till everything blurred into one drowsy cloud of despair.
When all the plucking had been done, she went to her teacher.
Have you lodged a First Information Report with the Police. An FIR?
An FIR? she repeated.
Yes. F for the frequency of the attack; I for the intensity; R for the recovery.
Recovery?
Yes, speed of recovery. If you want to escape the tortures of police custody,
their plucking out your eyes, your entrails, your hair, your limbs, one by one.
Yes, she said. Recovery. R for Recovery. Speed…
Cake
It was a large plain cake that I carried to my
son’s kindergarten class — centred with the numeral 3
and four multi-coloured candles arced around.
From a corner, I saw his body tense as a knife
relax to Aunty Bobb’s happy birthday song
as she led a discordant chorus of sing-song voices.
Painfully shy, he beamed like a high-watt bulb,
happy that everyone ate though he ate nothing
watching the coloured wax cleave to the cake.
Ever since, I can bake only large plain cakes,
more whole wheat now than flour, occasionally making concessions
for chocolate and apple; rum-soaked tangerines and dates;
gateaux and flans, truffles and tarts
bought as fancy treats for others.
For the family, butter and sugar beaten till creamy
eggs dropped one at a time; dry elements
alternating with wet; always the dry after the wet
till the mixture drops into a greased tin smooth as
slurry, ready for the hot orange coils of the oven.
There is always fragrance — of chocolate, vanilla,
date or apple long after the cake is done;
risen like a buoyant cock at dawn
or sunk like a lifeline withdrawn
or unrisen as stone.
For fragrance will swarm the airwaves,
even when the fragrance is deceptive.
Neera Kashyap is a writer of short fiction, poetry, essays and book reviews. She has authored a book of short stories for young adults, Daring to Dream (Rupa Publications) and contributed to several prize-winning anthologies of children’s literature.
