Pro-Creation
I was allured to that sperm,
An idea, cerebral and propitious
like the ant-hills of Valimiki.
Promises embellishing those words
curved delicately as you penned them down
your ink ejaculating a star
which will once shine in your name
and be the lexicon of your intellectual exploits,
Infiltrating my barren bosoms with lactogen.
I fell in love with the vision of that foetus,
Hormonal excuses sacrificed in that bibliography,
Your pedagogy, I knew would create
A revolution ...
A critical review, citation, compilation!!
Insecure and desperate I was
to feel the man who created that sperm;
Sculpturing the promise of life
an abysmal cognizance --- theory and activism!!
I turned down the ashes and brushed my fire;
A melancholic draft breeding my desire---
That sperm—
My blood refused to break
a monotonous surname;
Perhaps an addition
you recognized, garnering the references
of a promised motherhood---
My children justified the union
They never knew the black hole of style sheet
and faced the file that would print me
In love-making; while you explored your brawn,
Testing my nerves-- their impulse to deliver and withdraw,
And I obeyed like a patient,
Undressing my skill-sets --- you examined them
Each one, with your jagged methodology,
Before you made love to me;
Fondled my ideas, the swollen nipples
of sentences, paragraphs and fonts.
Then I was impregnated ---
I feel the baby's snarls as you sleep,
with women we can never know;
I feel the baby's worlds as you sleep
with women and their tags devouring your semen;
Our baby grows in me unlike them
who feasted upon your fleshy love;
Girlfriend, wife---
such unfortunate,
Deprived of our infinite intellect.
So, tonight I shall not be alone.
My body is now
Your writer's retreat,
A doctor's lab
where our baby grows in my care
and together we shall give birth,
You and I both wailing in labour,
For the baby who shall show the world
Something new.
Others shall come forward
As here, you sacrificed your women,
and I, my lust for your surname.
So together, we shall wail in labour
Of publication with me, your co-author.
Valmiki, the author of the "Ramayana," is revered as Adi Kavi, the first poet. The epic poem is dated to the 2nd half of the ist millennium BCE. At 480,000 words, it is four times longer than the "Iliad" of Homer. His real name was Agni Sharma , but he became known by the Sanskrit word for ant hill. Though he was the son of Varuna, the regent of the waters, he became lost as a child and was raised as Ratnakara by a hunter. As a youth he turned to robbery, but after encountering the great sage Narada, who taught him the mantra of Rama reversed as "Mara, Mara" (kill, kill), and he began to perform penance for his bad deeds by repeating it inaudibly. Unable to find virtue, he settled on an empty spot where the Tamasa river flows into the Ganga. He sat there for thousands of years without moving or eating, his hands folded and his mind lost in contemplation, trying to find the True, while white ants built an ant hill over him, through which only his eyes were visible. Narada found him and ordered him out to rescue Sita, whom her husband, king Rama of Ayodhya (an avatar of Vishnu), had ordered to be abandoned in the forest due to false gossip among his subjects. Though Agni Sharma demurred that he had no skill in any craft, not even in words, at Narada's urging he gave shelter to Sita in his hermitage, and soon after Rama's twin sons Kusha and Lava were born there. (In some versions, Lava was born at the ashram, but Kusha was created by Valmiki with dry grass.) One day the newly named Valmiki watched a little bird singing to its mate, but it was killed by an arrow. In anguish he chastised the hunter: "You will find no rest for the long years of Eternity / For you killed a bird in love and unsuspecting" -- this poetic form (shloka) became the basis of Indian epic poetry, beginning with the "Ramayana." When he returned to his monastery Brahma appeared before him, but Valmiki was still distracted by the senseless killing of the bird. Brahma thereupon pronounced (in the translation by William Buck), "So, by a river, the world's first verse has been born from pity, and love and compassion for a tiny bird has made you a poet. Use your discovery to tell Rama's story, and your verses will defeat Time. As make you poem, Rama's life will be revealed to you, and no word of yours will be untrue." So Valmiki composed his masterpiece and taught it to Kusha and Lava. Years later Valmiki attended a religious rite performed by Rama, and Lava and Kusha sang the "Ramayana;" when they came to the part about about Sita's exile, Rama became grief-stricken, whereupon Valmiki produced Sita. She called upon the earth, her mother, to receive her, and as the ground opened she vanished into it. Rama then learned that Lava and Kusha were his children. (In some versions, Rama's sons caught the horse of the sacrifice and defeated Rama's brothers; when Rama came to fight them Sita intervened and united her sons with their father.) In later years Kusha founded Kushavati (modern Kushinagar, near Gorakhpur) ; the imperial line that ruled Varanasi and the Maurya empire, which ruled the Indian subcontinent from 320-185 BCE, claimed descent from him. Lava founded Lahore.
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