The Deep
Enter a sea which lacks detail like glass,
take your emptied mind there – to the deep.
Go when you hear the sound of an old conch blown
to sink towards origin:
vents which hazarded life in the blackest of zones
and the site of a sacrificed continent, dumped
so ours could grow.
You’ll find
disentanglement doesn’t come easily then.
Well-caught but bravely astir
is how most of us try to live after all,
subject to bends and cramps as we near our end,
like in a dive, while unsummoned torches light
things we saw down there and would rather blank:
acres of bloodless coral,
and fish, dangling from a trawl line’s hooks
like a drowned city’s lamps.
St. Mote
Only one need be sanctified,
just one to set an example.
Though all are evenly lit
when illumined, unlike some saints we know,
only one needs official sanction
or all, if that’s possible,
their multitudes past imagining,
these – the invisible low
who enter our lives on a chance ray of light
and never stop dancing.
Just in Case
In case of earth
press G for (sustainable) Growth.
You might get an auctioned frog
or a gift-wrapped bee
for what it’s worth.
In case of air
breathe out and keep at it
till you fall down listless.
Everyone in the neighbourhood knows
the stuff we breathe in hurts
like nobody’s business.
In case of water
pray.
Even toads have been known to come through
the muck in our sacred rivers,
just as, our holy men tell us,
the righteous come through slaughter.
In case of fire
break glass
and find no nozzle
to extinguish your burning floor.
Why? Why? Why?
It’s a national puzzle.
In case of night
forget the dazzling halls
your forefathers paced
and you keep haunting.
Come back to life and sleep.
But in case of Babylon
weep.
From a Manual of Maritime Signals
• I have a diver down, keep clear at slow speed
• I am taking in or discharging or carrying dangerous goods
• Yes
• I require assistance
• I require medical assistance
• Stop carrying out your intentions and wait for my signal
• I am dragging anchor
• I require a tug
• I must abandon my vessel
• I require immediate assistance
• I am sinking
• I am on fire
• I have collided with a surface craft
• Repeat your distress position
• Your distress signals are understood
• I am proceeding to your assistance
• Yes
• Answer
• Yes
These unpublished poems are due to appear in late 2015 as part of a new Adil Jussawalla reader, I Dreamt a Horse Fell from the Sky: Poems, Ficton and Non-ficton, 1962-2015. Used here by kind permission of the publisher, Hachette India.
Adil Jussawalla was born in Bombay in 1940 and went to school there. He left it in 1957 to study Architecture in London but dropped out. He read English Language and Literature at Oxford and worked in London, primarily as an English language teacher, after graduating. He has lived mainly in Bombay with his wife Veronik after returning to the city in 1970. Books of poems: Land's End,1962, revised edition 2020.; Missing Person, 1976. Trying to Say Goodbye, 2011, The Right Kind of Dog, 2013, Gulestan (chapbook) 2017, Shorelines, 2019, The Tattooed Teetotaller and Other Winder, 2021. Books of Prose: Maps for a Mortal Moon, 2014, The Magic Hand of Chance, 2021. A book of poems, fiction, and nin-fiction: I Dreamt a Horse Fell from the Sky, 2015.Anthologies: New Writing in India (1974), Statements (co-edited with Eunice de Souza), 1976. Honours: Sahitya Akademi Award (for Trying to Say Goodbye), Tata Literature Live Poet Laureate for 2021.