(Two poems by Srikanth Reddy)
SCARECROW ECLOGUE
Then I took the poem in my hand & walked out
past the well & three levelled acres
to where the sugarcane built itself slowly to the songs of immature goats
& there at the field's shimmering center
I inserted the page
into the delicately-woven grass of the scarecrow's upraised hand
where it began to shine & give a little in the gentle
unremitting breeze sent over from the east.
I stepped back several paces
to look at what I'd done.
Only a little way off & the morning light bleached out my ink
on the page so it simplified
into a white rectangle against a skyblue field
flapping once, twice
as if grazed by one close shot after another.
The oxen snorted nearby
& there was a sense of publication
but not much else was different, so I backed off all the way
to the sugarcane's edge until the poem was only a gleam
among the fieldworker's sickles surfacing
like the silver backs of dolphins
up above the green crop-rows into view, then down from view.
How it shone in my withdrawal,
worksongs rising
over it all. So then I said the poem aloud, my version
of what the god dressed up as a charioteer said
to the reluctant bowman
at the center of the battlefield.
How he spoke of duty, the substance
of this world,
& the trembling armies ranged.
MONSOON ECLOGUE
Some years ago a procession
of men calling themselves
the sky-clad came
to this district to build
a hospital for birds that had been
damaged by the rains.
The landholders here
my grandfather among them
decided against it--
it not being our way
to intervene with monsoons
which is why to this day
the birds here grow
so damaged & wise,
or so our tutor said gravely
before stepping out into the sun-
washed coriander patch to watch
droplets work down
stems one by one, small
storms suspended, while over
the rooftiles came
breakers of mist making
our whole house to him
drift back like the high prow
of the viceroy's steamship
he watched sail off with his youth.
Inside I still could not find
the main verb the chariot
wheel performed. I thought
it was silver. It bore
the king with 100 heads
across a battlefield red
with his wounded
up to the end of the
beginner's workbook
then blue-skinned Rama bent his bow then his
raider's arrow met
the axle & then
I could not stop laughing
as through the doorway my mother scolded
the aphasic houseboy
who peed into our
green watertank
(black putti, untouchable)
arcing the thin golden
stream & singing
ooo-ee ooo-ee at our ruin.
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