Fall 2021

Six Poems

Ranjit Hoskote

RITUAL

Let the games begin

He sits alone in a room broader than a river
his song choked to a rivulet

The supple girls have bathed him in milk
fed him grapes and honey
and themselves

Tomorrow they will dance at the festival
as he burns

FLEECE

Or how the Great Game continues in Afghanistan:
feint and parry, M-24 and Humvee

Word comes back
from a border town
trapped in an occupied country

The wali writes in code
I’m sending you this fleece
woven from mare’s tail and mare’s nest

It’ll fit in your rucksack
Fold it away with your sketch
of the fragile midwinter sun

Hide them from the skinflint clouds
until I can come back
who’s sent you nothing but warnings

Emcee of freak weather events
I’ll lift your tugboats in the desert
They’ll tow defunct countries behind them

as I chant spells from my Pashto grimoire and make it snow

TALISMAN

A game of hide-and-seek reported from the bardo

Hiding behind the weekend
you watch as the carpenter sizes up your boat
and two old women start cutting your sails
into nine coarse pairs of trousers

Take a break to look at the indigo clouds
It’s time you owned up
to rinsing the heavens
and hanging them out to dry

What do you think that huge fish was
you hear the women whisper
on which he rode around the whirlpool?
He kept its skeleton by his bed his whole life

Here’s where you crouch
above these shimmering currents
gripping a river stone in your paused hand
powder blue veined with white

A talisman
the colour of home
Throw it
as far as it can go

 

TEMPLE

In which Barnum & Bailey play divide and rule

This road leads to the forgotten temple
that hard-faced men towed here with straining hawsers
a century maybe more ago

In the middle of the line you are writing about the temple
you will forget the word for tiger and wait
for the circus tent to go up and the flags of all nations

to flutter in an air so clear you could read
newspapers by starlight
but no headline could have seen ahead

how the circus hands would tear down the flags
swarm to the temple and carry it off
laying tracks to take it on tour

around the provinces uncaging among the crowds
rushing to see the spectacle
their forgotten and very hungry tiger 

APOSTLE

When you play Exquisite Corpse,
you don’t really wait for an answer

Clean your spear
apostle of silence
what legacy will you leave?

Not the shadow the darkness
             not the mask the face

Why would I rise from my body?
What is that ruby-coloured fruit?

*

Guest from the future
gather the candidates
at the missing step

Distance is the spur the tangent
               streaking across the map

Drought’s the harvest not the cue
Every night in the cave I dreamt of lions

*

Chemist a thousand graveyards
could be accommodated
on your shelf

Tell me what holds you up
              what keeps you going

I stand firm
because I stand nowhere

IN THIS COUNTRY OF SILENCE

Look sharp, because snakes could be ladders

In this country of silence
soldiers are burning newspapers
missing hosts call to give their baffled guests
directions to the east harbor
which fills with the foghorns of unseen ships
while plumbers hunt for silver spoons
hoping their ladders won’t give way

In this country of cunning
patrons looking for doors in the wind
find that bats read floor plans better than architects
What can I say about this magic show
when across the shriveling hours I see
the shops in the market bringing down their shutters
and the clouds apologize as a sandstorm rises?

In this country of exile
charred wisps of newspapers float across the river
no drumbeat follows no plucked string shivers
in their wake the sun is a searchlight
the jars in every stall brim with strawberry juice
and this tongue’s gone dry
waiting for refugee songs to return

Ranjit Hoskote is the author of seven poetry collections, most recently, of Jonahwhale (Penguin/Hamish Hamilton India; published in the UK as The Atlas of Lost Beliefs by Arc, where it was a 2020 Poetry Book Society Recommendation) and, earlier this year, Hunchprose (Penguin/Hamish Hamilton India). Hoskote lives in Bombay, India

(view contributions by Ranjit Hoskote)