A Gloss
I just took down a post…I’m revising that piece, but I’m also thinking that since I would like to place that piece in a publication, I probably ought not to publish it first on my blog. Some places dislike that. So, here’s something to tide us over. I was supposed to write a thing that was influenced by my recent reading of Pale Fire by Nabokov, so I wrote a gloss on a poem I wrote on my typewriter in Kolkata:
Where my self did take myself 1
a thought to lie in rot
rebirth to take or not
what ought to have been lost
was lost. 5
I only seek to submit
to myself the only place
to deposit what once was ash
I follow myself
shackled to empty nights 10
neither that will yield
what shall forever be veiled
the opposite now unknown
till time definite
ends my now. 15
The weeks cycle on
each day blends in
to the now remains in
reclusion and rhythm;
kaidas code seconds selfish 20
until leaving, that fierce
inevitable rupture,
the step that will close this chapter
of finger speed thru kaidas faster
devour selves in dha 25
thirikita dha ge na
dha ge thin na ki na
drown lusts in ink.
Line 1: Where my self did take myself
Namely, the Lake Gardens neighborhood of Calcutta, West Bengal, India, where the poet found I, a massive Smith-Corona manual typewriter with the painted inscription “Property of the State Bank of India” upon my cover waiting for him. He immediately removed the cover so he could see my hammers strike. Five months of listless production and countless episodes of solitary insanity later, in February of 2009, as he stared down another six months before returning to his homeland, his caress upon my carapace produced this, an unremarkable poem among several.
Line 2: a thought lie in rot
Desire, savagely unfulfilled; he used to look at my rollers longingly, as if I could replace his being-alone.
5-6: Lost
We can only speculate as to what the poet had lost; certainly he did not leave my side often enough to have lost anything material.
8: ash
The sight of riverside pyres burning flesh become an obsession of any visitor to my country. The poet smoked copious quantities of cheap marijuana from bidis while staring at the blank page in my rollers; he seemed to lack an adequate ashtray, because he exclusively spread his waste upon my keyboard.
10: shackled to empty nights
Though my city sleeps deeply, it does so in the streets, making it difficult to imagine a literal interpretation of empty nights. The only reading left open to me is the emptiness of a stranger submitting to large amounts of time spent being a stranger.
12: veiled
Clearly, an incursion of the Musselman upon an otherwise Hindu sensibility. Perhaps this can be explained by the prominence of the romantic ideal in the Sufi faith, an ideal that has little place in the daily morality of the modern Hindu.
19: Reclusion and rhythm
He would pass his days hitting Tabla drums vigorously, improving perhaps his speed but not his rhythm. Perhaps because of this deficit, he exclusively played in private (though he must have, of course, played in the presence of his Banarsi gurdwallah Guruji, whom he visited weekly, taking his sheaf of Tabla notes.)
20: Kaidas
Kaidas are a set of rhythms laid out in patters of sixteen beats. The life of a student of Tabla is one of memorization; each kiada begins with a simple outline and then expands upon itself in variations that ought to be played in order daily by the student. For the poet, daily practice sessions lasted from one to three hours, often preceded in later months by an hour of meditation. I often found myself staring longingly at his fingers caressing the skin of his drums, wishing they were upon my keys, producing something with meaning.
21-22: Leaving…rupture
Written in February; the poet had six more months left in my country. However, he would daily fantasize about his departure, a moment he referred to as his “reward.”
25-27: Dha therikita dha ge na dha ge thin na ki na
The beginning sixteen beats of a kaida he played obsessively towards the end of his stay with me, ignoring my silent keys.