Poems by Ranjit Hoskote
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Bākhā
That wide unalloyed sky from which the rain would pour without question on a plateau where the fort around which the people lived was called Fort the language that they spoke was called Language the script in which their letters flowed was called Hand the people with the loudest voices were called High the people whose voices they smothered were called Mute Under that wide unalloyed sky where Bākhā was the name they gave to the sweet speech that flowered in their songs of praise and to the callused worker who drowned in the sludge of their drains Prodigal This is you, coming back at last, head down: cowled, staff in hand, shoulders hunched against the rain, counting the steps you’ll take to reach the crown of withered mango leaves, the sacks of rotting grain piled high on the quay. You’ll raise your sleepless eyes to the clouds, searching for signs in the swirl again and ask them why Heaven must always lie to its prodigal son. Instead, for once, couldn’t it mend the broken harness, swat the fat blue flies swelling in a cloud on the dead horse, or bend these rust-freckled gateposts? Couldn’t it float a message across the water, a signal lent some speed by despair, some weight by hope? Look hard at the mist-shivered shoreline and wait. You’ll know when it’s time to step off this boat. |
Ranjit Hoskote is a poet, cultural theorist and curator. His collections of poetry include Icelight, Vanishing Acts, Central Time, Jonahwhale and Hunchprose. His translation of a fourteenth-century Kashmiri woman mystic’s work has appeared as I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded. Hoskote is also the editor of Dom Moraes: Selected Poems and has received the Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Award, the Sahitya Akademi Translation Award, the S.H. Raza Award for Literature and the JLF–Mahakavi Kanhaiya Lal Sethia Poetry Award. He has been a fellow of the international writing program at the University of Iowa and a researcher-in-residence at BAK, Utrecht. His poems have been translated into German, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Irish, Swedish, Spanish and Arabic.
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