[382] A River

Title :

A River

Poet :

A. K. Ramanujan

Date :

27 Mar 2000

1stLine:

In Madurai,

Length :

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Guest poem submitted by Suresh Ramasubramanian <suresh@>:

A River

In Madurai,
city of temples and poets,
who sang of cities and temples,
every summer
a river dries to a trickle
in the sand,
baring the sand ribs,
straw and women's hair
clogging the watergates
at the rusty bars
under the bridges with patches
of repair all over them
the wet stones glistening like sleepy
crocodiles, the dry ones
shaven water-buffaloes lounging in the sun
The poets only sang of the floods.

He was there for a day
when they had the floods.
People everywhere talked
of the inches rising,
of the precise number of cobbled steps
run over by the water, rising
on the bathing places,
and the way it carried off three village houses,
one pregnant woman
and a couple of cows
named Gopi and Brinda as usual.

The new poets still quoted
the old poets, but no one spoke
in verse
of the pregnant woman
drowned, with perhaps twins in her,
kicking at blank walls
even before birth.

He said:
the river has water enough
to be poetic
about only once a year
and then
it carries away
in the first half-hour
three village houses,
a couple of cows
named Gopi and Brinda
and one pregnant woman
expecting identical twins
with no moles on their bodies,
with different coloured diapers
to tell them apart.

	-- A. K. Ramanujan

Comments:

A. K. Ramanujan, who died recently, was one of India's greatest modern
poets.  This is a really beautiful piece of cynical criticism aimed at
poets who force themselves to look only at the beautiful things in life,
and mindlessly ape the same lines quoted by poets for aeons.

On the other hand, they tend to ignore the unpleasant facets of life,
unless perhaps it is a catastrophe which has killed several hundred
people.  No one knows or cares to write about a pregnant woman and a
couple of cows.

The City of Madurai in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu is one of
the most ancient cities in India.  A great deal of the Sangam era poetry
(the earliest and most famous Tamil poetry, dating back to the 2nd
century BC was composed here.  Since then, it has had a long and rich
tradition of art and culture.

Suresh.

From: "fronk nauwelaers" <fronk@>

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Poetry at its best feels like the solidarity caused by calamities,
therefore poetry should be disastrous for everything but the soul.




Fronk Nauwelaers
Belgian Poetry Systems
www.fronk.be
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<DIV><FONT face"Arial color"#008080>Poetry at its best feels
like the
solidarity caused by calamities,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face"Arial color"#008080>therefore poetry should be
disastrous for
everything but the soul.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face"Arial color"#008080></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face"Arial color"#008080><IMG alt""" hspace"0
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<DIV><FONT face"Arial color"#008080></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face"Arial color"#008080>Fronk Nauwelaers</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face"Arial color"#008080>Belgian Poetry
Systems</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face"Arial color"#008080><A
href""http://www.fronk.be">www.fronk.be</A></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>

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