Apr 2, 2017 NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry

Elegy for My Father
©April 2nd, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram

I try and try to remember
Everything, everything about
My father, who spent
His life unravelling, like
A gaily-coloured ball of yarn
Tumbling down a steep,
Unforgiving slope.

When my little brother,
Eleven years younger,
Would watch the sky with round eyes,
Point out planes with toddler fingers,
My father would name them.
Avro, he’d say, Jumbo Jet.
And my father would burst into song,
Always the same one,
He’d croon in his soft light
Baritone, musical and innocent:
Avara hoon (I am a vagabond),
And sing, Avro hoon (I’m an Avro),
And we’d laugh, like clockwork,
Predictable, precise,
Delight permeating us.

He loved flying, and planes,
(despite his dreams of becoming
a pilot thwarted by this and that)
And flew everywhere, fleeing
His debtors, leaving wife
Grieving, kids conceiving of life
Without a father for a long,
Long time. 
Reality was a game to him,
And he played it recklessly,
Grimly, convinced he would win.

Yet, back at a time when
He was still around at home,
His children rejoiced,
Found his bulk reassuring, solid,
Hardly ephemeral, eternal –
A man with weight, jollity,
Benevolence, levity, jokes.

Picchu chitti aathilé
Chaapaatu pandhilé
Chappati chappitane,
He’d say, more and more rapidly
And we’d repeat them,
Tripping over his water-falling
Tongue-twister, and get
All knotted-up, laughing.

Punning in three languages,
He’d make our sides ache,
And we never stopped to wonder:
Did all dads do this?
It was no big deal to us –
That’s what a father did.

I wish I could remember.
I try and try, but my mind
Falters, and I cannot bring back
His word-play, his heaving belly
Rippling with mirth, his strange
Obsession with tidiness, his urge
For control, for so much
Had been taken from him:
His worth, his wealth, his daring,
His promises to himself, his
Poor lost left leg,
Lost to a crushing train.

I try and try, but I cannot
Remember most of his jokes – just one,
The one he made when we,
Weeping, surrounded his hospital bed
Nineteen years before his death,
When he, with amputated leg, said:
“Now, your mother can truly say
Naan ottha kaal la nikkaren,“
(Since standing on one leg
Was what stubborn people did –
In Tamil.)

I try and try to recall
His humour, but a shadow
Falls over it, the shadow of his
Chasms of pain, craters of loss –
He didn’t speak much of that;
I do.  I have lost his voice,
The one that chuckled
And guffawed, rocking the room.

I have forgotten his puns.
This is a small loss, and a great one.

When he was cremated, a shape
That resembled him lay
On the mound at the cremation-grounds,
A shape of ash, a shape of dust.
And the priest who presided
Collected the main part of it,
Placed it in a brass pot, covered
It with something (a cloth?
I cannot remember), draped
Lovingly wound garlands
Of beautiful flowers around it,
Handed it solemnly to us.

My brother, sister and I
Carried it in a rickshaw
To a river outside the city,
And dropped the pot,
Ashes, flowers, my father
Into the waters, and we
Watched, as it floated away
Bobbing in the waves.
We didn’t say much.

Where did all his words go?

Did they fly up, like birds
Released from his frame,
When his breath escaped,
His eyes fixed on a spot
On the hospital walls
Beyond all of us, who watched
While he left us, his cancer
Eroding his insides, the pain
Matching the brightness
In his eyes, as we held his hands,
And the hospital staff filed in
Silently, with bent heads?

Did he pun one last time?
Did we not hear it?
For he couldn’t speak, then.
The words had flown,
And he couldn’t catch them.
His breath fluttered out.
He left us yet again –
This time, to a place
Beyond our imagining,
Probably transforming himself
Into an Avro, flying into the sun.

He imagined us all.
And we remain,
Scattered remnants,
Of his tattered life,
Eddying in his wake,
As we gather ourselves
Into an illusion of self-hood.

I shall try to remember all this
When my breath flutters,
And my words vanish in
A puff of air, and my eyes
Fix on a spot somewhere beyond
Those gathered around.

I shall follow my words
And escape the shell
Encasing this world.
And who knows? I just
Might meet my father’s
Puns spiralling down.

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This is my poem for Day 3 of NaPoWriMo.  The prompt was to write an elegy (I chose to write an unrhymed one), and to “center the elegy on an unusual fact about the person or thing being mourned.”

Tags: #Elegy, #Father, #NaPoWriMo2017, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram

Oct 14, 2015 Original Poetry, Writing 201

Elegy for a Dying Earth

(Day 8: Flavor, Elegy, Enumeratio)

©October 15th, 2015

By Vijaya Sundaram

I fear the earth has come to reap what we have sown

In haste, we sowed the breeze, and reaped this hateful wind

And through this storm, we’ll miss those things we loved so well

The rain, the snow, the flowers, this land– for we have sinned.

 

Not sins against a God, or gods, or goddesses

But sins against the likes of us, of you and me,

Against our children full of confusion and hurt

To whom we give our ravaged earth, and dying seas.

 

I’ll miss the scent of rain on dusty earth, the scent

Of budding rose, and jasmine sweet, and marigold.

We’ll see the ponds go dry in summer months, and geese

That leave in droves, will seek new lands, and mourn the old.

 

Now, storms and hurricanes ravage our broken lands

And dolphins strand themselves, and turtles gasp, and more —

Asphyxiated fish that choke in netted seas

Lie dead and blind upon our broken, littered shores.

 

I mourn them all, the birds, and animals, and plants

I mourn us all, so smug, so proud, so full of greed

With eyes of death, he chokes our breath– that demon, Wealth;

And laughs at us, although we cry; for mercy, plead.

 

What hope have we, who heed his lusty, tempting call?

What chance this earth against that mighty money-song?

If we but stop and turn things round (turn off the lights!)

We might yet live, and save what’s right, avert what’s wrong.

 

So, close your eyes, and step outside, while life yet thrives

And taste the beauty of this fragile Earth, who gives,

Such wealth, her fruit and flowers, and these, our forests wild,

So fragrant, fresh and sweet, in places that still live.

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So, our assignment today was: Write an elegy, use flavor in your poem, and try the rhetorical device of Enumeratio

Alas, I attempted the Elegy form, but gave up almost instantly.  Still, just to challenge myself, I tried rhyming (It’s hard to resist a trite and easy rhyme scheme, but I really tried).  I’ll probably go back to tweak this poem!  This is only my second draft!

Also, I remembered almost too late that I needed to incorporate “flavor,” so I tried that, too.

My Enumeratio needs work, but I tried, I tried!

So, just as I did last week, when I attempted a classical Ode, and followed it with my next (non-Classical) Ode, I shall aim for another Elegy, but that will come later.  I have to run, now)

Thanks for reading, all!

(P.S.  So, I went back in just now – and tweaked three or four lines, just rearranged some words, cut out some, added an “and” or a “so,” and suchlike.  It’s at times like these that I remember my favorite Oscar Wilde, who once said words to the effect of, “I’m exhausted.  I spent all morning putting in a comma, and all afternoon taking it out.”)

Tags: #Elegy, #Life, #Love, #Writing 201, Beauty, Change our Ways, Climate Change, Commas, Dying Earth, Oscar Wilde reference, Save the seas, Savor the sweetness of this planet, Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind