Prose Poems,
Stranger than a Sun
1
And then finally when night stood still, an
evening, its reign of suntrance years, of wealth, wilderness and glory of many
campaigns left in a river of subterfuge, its long sinewy columns rolled down
the glitter in a night borderless on stealth and stubbornness. I have been
living years of such understanding, that one day in a cover of duress and
despair, time might conclude a hasty retreat, its tiny droplets may not even
join and sections of unrepaired horizons would differ as nights and
evenings revise a no-dissolving pact. The Volga at Tatarstan had refused time
and again to curtail the living with the living, different voices sharing a
confluence of similar strengths, Tartar warriors stood on banks stretching to sea,
and the sea to many a skies holding aloft such spoken memories such relived
lives. I had even forgiven you, you who once called upon words to reopen old
forgotten closures. In an ageless complete, you are the reversal, you remain
the scroll, and you are the substrate of my many lives.
2
Hillbrow at Johannesburg faces darkness with
such ferocity; lights clamour over each other’s shoulder holding a falling sun,
for here there can never be any nights. Forever evenings scream in shrill
rejoinder, a clay complexioned Ethiopian girl with a long neck revises
proximity from a cabaret number. Men from Abuja listen with shaking heads, some
even recite silently. Colors of evening find asylum on foreign surfaces. The
scarred white girl rolls her eyes and gives voice to expanding vessels. Living
is defiance. Illumination is not just a street here and curtains part
revealing revelry of age old explanation. It cannot be the same as it was at
Gwalior or even Old Delhi. Each living stays far behind in closed alleys
and assembling those, leaves foot steps that can never return.
3
Living and loving is a distant rite, I had
often agreed to. Like a stranger living, loving too returns in such uneven
evenings and dawns. Like the river bells or boatman’s voice traversing the dark,
like the ruins at Hauz Khas in a sudden flutter of pigeon wings, like the crowd
at Karol Bagh talking to people behind us, loving is sleepless in corridors, in
trains when a blue azure sky turns maddeningly grey. The first drops of rain I
could never catch, you decided then the victor is still pardonable. Defeat is
loving and loving, the first drops of rain slipped past our many lives, many a
times. Defeat is your eyes, your smile, your silence in such sand stretched
storms. Living itself remains a defeat of times, eras always build up again.
4
What would you say if I tell you that I am
back again? Again shall we ever decide, closeness can it stay as a legend, a
Pashtun legend, dust and stories make even beautiful burials. Going back means
untelling many such legends. Barren as it is on such bad lands, life once moved
balanced perfectly on dewdrops. Dryness remained covered in sheaths of our
talking. And in such moments once happened, surfacing again takes even longer.
Yes, what did you say when nothing was really there except us. What did you say
when a sky hiding us just turned back, what did you say when loneliness of a
raven flashed once in the dark. What did you say then?
5
Yet we are forever lonely. We were lonely
even when we were together. Your sudden laughter at an afternooncafe in
Connaught Place on that day made people turn and look at us. Your whispered
smile said, Aren’t we all structures, trying our best to resemble each other.
It was then my turn to laugh, spluttering Nescafe on your face. Loving was the
ultimate loneliness then struggling to keep up with desperate evenings. And as
we shared our nights of gentle violence, gentle killings, an evening took us
back repeatedly to where we had never lived. This is the evening I try to
share with you today. When the train comes to a screaming halt, these are
evenings we could never correspond. Loneliness takes us over again with an
avenging belief.
Tartar Warriors -- Xia Taptara
