TAMIL MOVIE BOX OFFICE HIT
INDIAN FILM KISS CONTROL
HINDU PILGRIMAGE
IN PRAISE OF HOT WEATHER
AMONG OTHER THINGS
LANDSCAPE WITH CLASSIC FIGURES
FICUS BENJAMINII
SENSE
THE FIRST MORNING
WARRIOR
BEETHOVEN STRASSE, FRANKFURT
THE PIAN

Chandra, G.S. Sharat

Chipasula, Frank Mkalawile

Ghose, Zulfikar

Petersen, Kirsten Holst

Shapcott, Thomas

Wallace-Crabbe, Chris

Whiting, B.R.

English

Research Online

Kunapipi Volume 3 Issue 1 Article 4 1981 Poems G.S. Sharat Chandra Zulfikar Ghose Chris Wallace-Crabbe Thomas Shapcott B.R. Whiting See next page for additional authors Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi  Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Chandra, G.S. Sharat; Ghose, Zulfikar; Wallace-Crabbe, Chris; Shapcott, Thomas; Whiting, B.R.; Chipasula, Frank Mkalawile; and Petersen, Kirsten Holst, Poems, Kunapipi, 3(1), 1981. Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol3/iss1/4 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: research-pubs@uow.edu.au Poems Abstract TAMIL MOVIE BOX OFFICE HIT INDIAN FILM KISS CONTROL HINDU PILGRIMAGE IN PRAISE OF HOT WEATHER AMONG OTHER THINGS LANDSCAPE WITH CLASSIC FIGURES FICUS BENJAMINII SENSE THE FIRST MORNING WARRIOR BEETHOVEN STRASSE, FRANKFURT THE PIANO Authors G.S. Sharat Chandra, Zulfikar Ghose, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Thomas Shapcott, B.R. Whiting, Frank Mkalawile Chipasula, and Kirsten Holst Petersen This journal article is available in Kunapipi: https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol3/iss1/4 G. S. Sharat Chandra TAMIL MOVIE BOX OFFICE HIT Hero, son of factory owner turned reformist meets heroine, daughter of labourer in the same. Villain, the foreman, has been chasing her around steps, spools and ladders. It's love at cafeteria queue. Heroine goes AWOL with hero to romp around water-falls & muddy buffaloes, singing many hit songs. Villain, hiding behind a stoned goddess sees everything reports everything to heroine's father who locks up heroine then confronts the hero with a speech worthy of Lenin or Trotsky or both. Hero wallows in nightclubs & debauchery drinking imported whisky always with the label turned towards the audience. Whisky improves his complexion though he bewails his organs are bleeding. An hour of this later villain is discovered as a true imperialist secretly planning overthrow of the Workers' Union. Hero sobers up fast, chases villain by bullock cart, lorry, horse & jeep. Hero & villain lock hand in hand in combat deliver many blows to each other to the offstage accompaniment of tabla. At last villain falls with much blood & redundance. Hero, heroine, father & the working class quickly gather for a group photograph under framed revolutionaries for the i7th week at the Republic cinema at 10 Rupees for a third class ticket in black market. 18 INDIAN FILM KISS CONTROL (Indian censors have recently allowed kissing on the screen) Depending on the length of the movie a maximum of kisses is negotiable. Invariably kisses should best be accompanied by dialogue how the lips are fated to come together. The lower class may kiss the upper class if the movie is for export. Where a brahmin has to kiss a whore background music should make it clear it's a bad habit: sexual germs passing from mouth to mouth animated to the tune of sitars is one way of proving it. Ass kissing of any manner is strictly prohibited. Where the scene calls for an ass a washerman should be riding it. No French kissing is allowed we have enough problems with Danish. We should bear in mind we cannot let overkissing lead to overpopulating. The Russians have already kissed off Afghanistan we must not let them kiss us off too. HINDU PILGRIMAGE Up on a nondescript hill a legend nurtures this god as a mortal besieged by wine & women, who ascended to its crest hotly pursued by cuckolded husbands, then vaporized to an even higher sanctuary leaving his mortality in an imprint of stone. 19 His mythic antecedents thus established, . the. black god stands dazzling pilgrims from the high and the lowly, for who's there that does not need quick solutions from courtly folly. The high priest when properly appeased can expedite the pilgrim's petition placing flowers in the ears of the lord, then reading omens in their withered fall: to expect the god's consort to join in the lottery you need to cough up a special joining fee. Each year pilgrims trudge up the hill buttocks pushed into their haunches like the engines of Volkswagen, to the technicolor sideshow of professionals brandishing cracked bowls, mangled limbs. The steps to climb are massive, built that way to humble the flesh, melt excess sin. You'll hear the rich chant, give our husbands that special position, our daughters movie stars, our sons virgin brides with money for cars, in short, give us everything we've given you so far. Win or lose they all return each year with renewed fervor, blessed with chant, camphor, they'll either die or recover: oracular mind has no faith in equity, compliance is not complicity. 20 Zulfikar Ghose IN PRAISE OF HOT WEATHER What I like is loss of energy, the feeling of complete incompetence and the desire to do nothing; I enjoy, too, the memory of gardens in the gaudy tropics where hibiscus flowers bloom in the heat and one sits in a public square with its slow fountain and watches the brown young girls in pink frocks, laughing as they walk arm in arm, a hand thrown across the white protuberant teeth. I enjoy inconsequential fantasies that come with the humid breeze. There seems no sense to inventing ways of survival in hostile environments and the busy seriousness of people in the colder latitudes is really laughable. In cold weather I dream of pomegranate flowers and have delusions of the fragrance of mango· blossoms, I long to be where I can be lazy, lying in a hammock, listening to a distant flute. I think that out of such a purposeless waiting for sunsets, the hour when the jasmine exudes its perfume and lovers meet under the mimosas, could come an existence 25 of a perfectly senseless fertility: the way it is in the humid tropics things just growing in a great confusion, the earth's species competing blindly, absorbing the moisture and the heat for nothing more extraordinary than existence itself, the vines climbing up the tall trees to be, somehow, in the sun. AMONG OTHER THINGS A failure, one concludes, observing the manner in which the tulip tree's startlingly perfect blossoms are torn by the wind, their porcelain appearance as if nature took its model from the five grimy towns of Staffordshire - shattering against the concrete driveway, an effect no different from a fine thought be'ing distracted by the neighbour suddenly turning loud his stereo. Among other things, one can't suppress the memory that places one under the shade of mango trees where one sees how fallen and inedible fruit, gone putrid with infestations of insects, can still evoke the comical odours of adolescent passions. Like the fruitless mulberry tree whose foliage thrives on being regularly sprayed with insecticide, one lives on small dosages of diluted, secret poisons. 26 Chris Wallace-Crabbe LANDSCAPE WITH CLASSIC FIGURES Four big swans, black arrows, beat up to Point Ricardo in furl-tight formation, one skein of cirrus drifting. Never a vertical: unbroken blonds and slates corrode the retina. Just here and there, frail, tall the surf rods of Sicilian farmers .. Flaccus, your olives have blown small to smithereens: bees yawn through your sockets broodingly. Day thickens. 42 Thomas Shapcott FICUS BENJAMINII Potted, behind a sofa in Stockholm. On a Toronto platform, pruned. Stephan Dom, Vienna, and Ficus Benjaminii swaying above tribute garlands, safe in its tub. Ficus Benjaminii takes something away it deflects light deep into itself a shady undercurrent of ripples. each leaf with its edge of ripples dreaming of dampness, compost, humid Queensland summer. ++ Ficus Benjaminii is mine. The original tree claims my backyard children growing up share figtree shade that foresaw their space four hundred years and knotted its trunk to a giant's wrist sinews two children cannot grip around. They twitch in dreams for such security the cubbyhouse ten feet up no sun a summer room of green benches beyond storms never drought nothing disturbing spiders that shall be harmless for life like the work of birds. At night fruitbats weave charms to net stars with beetles are brought blindfold chubby slaves that bump giggling caught in a grandfather tickle the fig dreaming us there we toss above damp sheets and return alone, find the secrets, centuries knotted in those wrists plunging through compost 43 under the falling hair of leaves that still ripple like summer water when the sun slaps loud outside. ++ In my knuckles there is the remembrance of compost there are green shoulders of leaves where you leave a shadow. Stockholm, Vienna, Toronto: there are no spiders. Ficus Benjaminii, indoors, trimmed for tubs, we call it Weeping Fig in my country but that requires growth and so much living, building, experience before the right to grieve may be granted. You are correct to refer only to textbook botany. You have my birth legacy in your potplants, but only the rootless exile of its name. B. R. Whiting SENSE Dawn with a lunar light, Sea and sky silent, High tide, sand white, The harpooner patient Seaweed waves aside From knife-handed crabs, Betrays where fish hide A1_1d the spearman stabs To disturb the shark form Of the boat's dark shade As the surface is tom By the splash that's made. 44 No word. Near the red rocks In the distance, loud, A sea -eagle shivers and shocks The silence, his proud Stooping explodes in spray, Then the hushed air closes ~ The leopard eyes of a great ray Appear ~ the spear lunges. It fights with a strong wing And a devil's face, Jabbing its long sting With terrible force, Tosses the sea white, Magnificant, plumed With spray, its last fight Foreseen, foredoomed By the fine harpoon That hoists its prey And dumps it down On the deck to die. As it arches and flops Its tom agony From its pale belly pops A newbom stingray ~ The austerity of day recedes, We stoop with care, Smile, give him the sea he needs, Laugh at him there, A perfect small being Diving through the clear tide Of all that we were seeing To his future pride ~ The sense of a design that has No sense in words, And yet the pattem possesses The flight of birds And the fall of the small ray Wavering to confirm Its shadow's light play On the sandbar form. 45 THE FIRST MORNING Gulls, cold air, morning Created for the first time Innocent of meaning Without man, word, system I saw an albatross trail his wing Down waves as great as this whole port, High as houses, walled with rain, The Antarctic sky storm -shot -Nets, iridescent oily scum, hulls Weaving and burning for the first morning, The new day and the gulls new Until words come to blur the sign; All there, the prehistoric light And again, the individual New and unique, conjured from the night To find the words worn thin and dull I saw the silver belly of a dolphin - Flash in the spray, Cross the bows and sound Down and away; Waves ran on and remained, The hull heeled over to' the wind, Down beyond words it sounded, A fountain contained in the mind The gentle images sing, the gulls Fulfil the air, their wings reveal How nearly the individual Contains the spell, Signs spelling the wordless fountain Music ordering forms of light Around the talisman Of things united. 46 The power in the sound Transcends the port, Wave and ocean, wing and wind In the tension of art; Made new again The cliche of dust Spells out the fountain, Writes albatross, The waves cry summertime Venus, Words quicken and combine, Transition, synthesis: Singing a rainbow from yesterday's bones. 47 Frank Mkalawile Chipasula WARRIOR Imitation warrior in synthetic monkey skins over a three-piece suit inevitable overcoat, stick, homburg hat, dark glassed and false toothed smiles; he clutched horse-hair flywhisk and plastic spears at conference tables in Whitehall fighting with words only begging his masters for a new name, i a flag and a new anthem. r I 'Out of your people's skins ' ~ fashion a flag, their bones a flagpole; ' f ~ Their laments shall be your anthem; Rename the country and it shall be.' That is the recipe of his rule sincere to the last instruction. Meanwhile, the settlers massacred his people with volleys of bullets, littering their mangled bodies like trash 117 all over our country. Over them he preached non-violence, forgiveness and the masters, relieved, curled up in bed and slept without headaches. Now he prances clumsily among survivors mourning their kin at his rallies as he samples the men for export to the deep dungeons of J oni on loan and Aid agreements for the bribe of blood rands. He demands handclaps everywhere he turns he confronts his inflated portraits nailed and hoisted on flagpoles whose blood-drenched banners are birds straining at ropes. Corrugated mist like fish scales covers the eyes of the praise dancers round him dancing for the war lost to the settlers. Then the songs shore up his lofty platform as he leaves his people at its foot, steeled with spears and shields praising the deserter. They hail him Messiah, Saviour as he fattens on larceny. - for David, and Derek Walcott-118 Kirsten Holst Petersen BEETHOVEN STRASSE, FRANKFURT Set in surroundings saturated by history this town has none. One day in 1944 wiped it out. The tourist guide suffered acutely, boasting about the height of the glass and concrete banks, in both metres and yards and arranging them in an international hierarchy where they overshadowed both New York and Tokyo, and painfully forcing a sense of history onto reconstructed old houses, erected according to original plans and authentic photographs. In this sleepy surviving street large old houses stare blindly at each other across budding trees and street-car on cobbled stones, a yellowing photograph fixed in the hot windless air, hiding its burden of guilt behind lace curtains, stubbornly asserting the world that was smashed. On Sunday Mornings in a nearby town in cobble-stoned square by the Gothic cathedral local choirs capture the past in well measured four-voiced songs, and a small girl in national costume leans back as far as she can go 134 and sees a solitary bird crossing the church tower, reflecting its bomber shadow in her upturned eyes, and the choir singing rises to a crescendo and drowns the noise of screams under falling brick, and the still air soothes the tourist guide's pain at real old windows, hidden away in farm houses and reset in imitation walls, and resurrected clocks, still marking time. And fading photographs. (EACLALS Conference, 1981) THE PIANO It arrived early one summer morning just before the lilacs, but definitely after the tulips. It rolled leisurely up the garden path on its castor wheels clad in a woollen blanket to protect it from apple blossom and bird droppings. It didn't stop at the door, but calmly and deliberately turned itself on its end and marched straight into the room where it installed itself in the appropriate corner. With the blanket off its dark, polished skin and pearly white teeth instantly made demands on the room and us. Vases, chandeliers and leather bound books were suddenly missing; its shiny surface 135 did not mirror the gold frames of calm landscapes, and coffee cups just don't tinkle in this room. In vain did it try to echo the firm footsteps of a proud patriarch or the muffled voices of hurrying maids. And whom could we hire to act the dreamy young girl or the calm mature matron to sit on the embroidered stool with her hands delicately poised and her back straight and purposeful and where is the corridor down which the music floats past the linen room and the pantry to meet the peace of mind of the owner in the library? Maybe I'll paint it yellow and stain its teeth red. 136 

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