On that side of the city near the ruins
an abandoned, empty well
and within, in cold darkness
in waters deep within
amid deep-sunken stairs
in the old stale puddle...
I cannot follow these seeming foundations
these depths
encircling that well, entangled
silently stood the fig trees
in them hang the abandoned owl-nests,
brown, round
the smells of a hundred past pieties
green, jungly, raw
swim in the air and become the weighted doubt
of some unknown quality
that unsettles the heart
on the railings of the well, beguiling, green
elbows resting
leans the white flowered tagar tree
and nearby,
a flashing red flowered cluster
my kanher
calling me to that edge of danger
where the black mouth of the well
glances upward toward the sky’s emptiness
in the emptiness of the well’s thick darkness
sits the gatekeeper Brahmarakshas
and from within rises echo after echo
like the mutterings of the insane
speculations,
defilement.
to wash away, at every moment
the shadow of impurity—
day and night, to make clean—
Brahmarakshas, scouring his body
with the claws of his hand, again
and again hands chest mouth
still it stays...
still it stays
and...from his lips
strange strotras, mantras
fevered curses in chaste sanskrit,
lines on the forehead weave
glistening strands of thought
in a continuous stream’s maddening flow
—life’s sympathy blots
but when, in the well’s deep inner wall
oblique sun-rays fall and
motes rise,
light surfaces
he thinks the sun has bowed and saluted him.
when a moonbeam forgets its way
and its rays stagger off the walls
he thinks it worships him as the
venerable knower.
body and mind pierced, yet
he rejoices, feeling the sky
too has humbly accepted him.
and with a twofold, frightening potency
his understanding mind ranges
through the folk-tales of Sumer-Babylonia, mellifluent Vedic hymns
today’s chands, mantras, theorems, theories
of Marx Engels Russel Toynbee Heidegger Spengler Sartre even Gandhi
everyone’s proof commented on afresh–
all this as he bathes in the well’s dense greenness.
...this thundering, echoing, moving
darkness—bringing up phonemes
obscure words revolving anew
each word dividing its resonance
each form battling its reflection
maimed
becoming
the echo that wars with its echo
upon the well’s rails
beguiling green elbows rest,
and the white tagar flowers listen
—to these echoes
the delicate fruits of the gooseberry tree
listen, the ancient fig
listens, I too listen to the tragedy that drifts
in this mad allegory
barred within this old well.
X X X
very high a dark savorous stairway
its ill-lit step...
they of a strange interior universe.
a stepping-up and a falling;
again, a stepping-up and a-slipping,
with twisted feet
and on its chest many sores.
more fierce than when good and evil
meet
calamity between good and a greater good
small fortune,
more likely misfortune!!
...an exorbitant fullness’
anguish is dear ...
geometry’s eye constructs
a moral investiture
self-consciousness’s subtle moral recollection—
...when has it been easy
to placate an exorbitant completeness
all explanation is precious!!
the sun comes out
anxiety’s red haemorrhaging-river flows into the day;
the rising moon
on the wound
dazzling white bandages on
its disarrayed forehead.
stars scatter the sky’s edge
from uncountable decimals
come decimal-drops on all sides:
in the transposed spreading field
beaten, he comes to use,
and lies spread...
chest and arms open extended,
a purifier.
his person a tender quartz, temple-like,
in that temple a stairway
it is hard to climb
the lonely stair.
with emotion with thought
the coordinated formed matter
the stair of assimilated arithmetic
i left for him.
that thought-emotion, that work coordinated and formed
in research
amidst all pandits, all thinkers he
in search of a guru
drifts!!
but the age turned and he came trading fame ...his only wealth from work now,
from that wealth a heart & mind,
and, subject to wealth, from within
truth’s glint
ever smolders.
self-consciousness and yet in this
love’s discord...
a world consciousness unmade!!
at greatness’ feet
an agitated dejected mind!
if only i had met him those days
then living his anguish myself
i would have told him his worth
his greatness!
of his, and his greatness’,
use to people like us
i would have spoken of that inward greatness!!
powdered within
and outside between two stone slabs
this is a farcical tragedy!!
in the well himself
endlessly inside the mad symbols
how he within the dark room
kept at his arithmetic
and died...
in dense barbed undergrowth
in a dark cavity
dead bird like
departed
that flame unknown slept forever
this happened: why!
why did this happen!!
Brahmarakshas’ breast-fed student
i so wished to be
whose incomplete works
whose pain’s source
collected, extracted,
risen I could bring.
Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh was born almost the exact moment of the Russian Revolution--in November 1917, and his socialist leanings were to remain strong throughout his life, sometimes getting him into trouble with the government. He belonged to a Maharashtrian family but wrote mostly in Hindi, a sign of the vastness, fluidity and permeability of the Hindi-speaking area and the Hindi language itself--his brother became an influential literary figure in Marathi, a sign of the breadth and tolerance of linguistic interactions across regional cultures that has an urgent relevance today. Muktibodh began to publish young and was one of the poets included in the influential first Tar Saptak (roughly translatable as "the higher, more difficult octave") collection. This collection, published in 1943, is often regarded as a turning point in Hindi literary modernism for its freer and more diverse rhythms and themes. This recognition did not help Muktibodh economically and his life was spent working briefly in varied jobs including the airforce, as print and radio journalist, and mostly as teacher in various schools in small towns scattered throughout central and northern India--Shujalpur, Ujjain, Indore, Jabalpur, Nagpur, Benaras as well as, briefly, in the larger cities of Calcutta, Bangalore and Bombay. Perhaps these travels sharpened his ear to the wider, more abruptly spoken and colloquial Hindi that his poems sometimes contain. Equally, his Masters in Hindi from Nagpur University gave his work historical depth--his literary criticism of the older Hindi poet Jayashankar Prasad's work carve out a newer understanding of the modern subject pruned of the cosmological-nationalist posture that Prasad's work had assumed at the crest of the freedom struggle in the twenties and thirties. Muktibodh retained much of the Sanskritized vocabulary of Prasad--but his subject, emerging out of the delirium of the World War and Partition, was marked by the fifties sentiment of imminent nuclear cataclysm.
Nikhil Govind has a doctoral degree in south asian literature at the University of California at Berkeley. His research focuses on the figure of the revolutionary in the mid century Hindi novel. His poems have appeared in Chandrabhaga and his Haibuns and Haikus have appeared in Pirene's Fountain. A video of him reading poems (with A.B. Spellman) as part of UC Berkeley's Holloway Series in Poetry can be found here. He is currently teaching in the Manipal Center for Philosophy and the Humanities.