, ..

paM~S,

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PDMAS

( A&VIHD
K&!SHRA ,,"

M~'H&aT&A

..

VRISHcmc PUBLICATION - 2

Biographical Note

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra was born in 1947 at Labore

the ezra-fakir press which publishes ezra and an
Lino-culs :'
Cenlre spread: Bhupen Khakhar.
Cover and inside: Gu/am Sheikh.
Photograph of the poet (back. cover) :
Harbans Chadha.
Types cut on Ihe back cover (lina) :
layendra Soni.
He Jives at 37, Balrampur House. Allababad; runs
occasional poetry pamphlet; co-edits damn you I a
mag of the arts; teaches, is marfied.
Books & Pamphlets
Bharatmata: A Prayer (Bombay. the ezra-fakir press; 1966)
Woodcuts on Paper (London, Gallery ""'umber Ten; )961)
Bachchichakra: the last poems (Unpublished; 1968)
Pomes I Paemes I Poemas : Collected Shorter Poems
I '
( Baroda, Vrisb<1lik Pr... ; 1971)

c#l9
Acknowledgements

Some of the poems have appeared in :

Pusbpanjali, Manhattan Review, Prisoner, Trace,
The Only Journal of The Tibetan Kite Society,
VRISHCHIK
Allahabad University Magazine .
. 4 Residency Bungalow
'Bachchichakra IX', 'Old Poem, Stray Poem', 'Poem to a
University office compound
Baroda-2. Gujarat, ,ladia,
Bombskulled Child" 'Leftovers' are appearing in
New Writing in India, ed. Adil Jussawalla (London, Penguin Book.).
 Every moment is a moment of blood in Bangia Desh to-day. Blood ha s risen over towering mo numents and
minare ts of mosq ues. Blood of the martyrs of libera ti on move ment has over flown acros s the frontiers; yet the
so called giant nations have virtually slept over this mass-scale butchery of unarmed innocents by the military
stooges of West Pakistan.

R. N. 15189/69

c#G
VRISHCHIK
April - May 1971.
Year: 2. Nos.: 6-7.
Editors :
Space donati ons in this number :
Gulam Sheikh
Bhupen Khakhar Dynamo Dilectries., Baroda.
Bhara t Lindner Pvt. Ltd., Baroda.
4 Residency Bun galow, C hika Ltd ., Bombay.
University omce co mpound, Mercury Painls a nd Varnishes Ltd ., Bombay.
Baroda-2. Gujarat, India . Vo lt.s Ltd., Ahmedabad.

The Artists' conforence called by the cenlral Lalit K.la Akademi has largely been successful as the
proposal to change the constitution of the Akademi was unanimously accep ted by the house. Though there
are some differences of opinio n over the rraming of the coustitut io n a nd its details, the conference accepted
tbe proposa l of forming an electora l co llege of the wo rking artists, art critics and art historian s of India.
This college of roughly 300 initial members (the number may va ry according to survey of the active
artists etc.,) may elect a general council who may elect a board of nine directors ass igned to carry out
specific programmes with full responsibilities and powers give n to them. The house has appointed a
committee to work on th e proposed draft of the electora l college and present a report as SOO D as possible .

.,

The workings of the stat.e Lalit Kala Akademi of G ujarat has created wide-spread dissatisfaction among the
working artists of Gujarat resulting in tbe boycott of the an nual exhIbitions of the Akademi since last three
yea rs. We call (0 all working art ists of Gujarat to unite again and fight against the un-democratic set up
and dem and a ne w constituti on and changes in the policies of tbe Akademi to promote and safeguard the
interests of the a rtists of Gujarat. An open letter to the artists of Gujarat is being drafted to call a
meeting of artists to form a union of the a rtists of Gujarat.

Publ ished by Gulam Sheikh from 4 Residency Bungalow, University Office Compound. Baroda-2. and printed by A. N. Joglekar
at 3-A Associates, 4-5, Laxl11i Estate, B'lhucharaji Road, Baroda,
 for MITUN

...
 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

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OLD POEM, STRAY POEM TO WHOMSOEVER IT MAY CONCERN

am a farmer this is to inform he who opens this

have bullocked the countryside that
dropped blisters for seeds when i have been simplified
have harmlessly killed sexless earthworms to a pair of un breathing nostrils
have fed the earthy cracks like a saviour and my laugh been eaten
have peeled my tired clothes and by beasts of the air, in short,
given them graciously after my death
to her who wears my tiredness my throat should be zipped open
have seen god in the nude with my wife's claws
and poems slicking there
like cinema posters
be scraped and sold
as wastepaper
to cover costs incurred in
the last rites

furlher
my tongue
should be thoroughly cleaned
before it is burnt, and the few
punctuation marks
still sticking to ilS pores
be picked out wilh tweezers
by a qualified zoologist
POEM TO A BOMBSKULLED CHILD

it is time for the

forests to stitch a hut of leaves
for the
sea to hump islands
for the
earth to quake
for vol canoe to smile like a sunflower
the
with lava-petals
for the river to gather its fi shes
and slowly shrink up the waterfall
and begm the trickles all over again
it is time for the paleolithics to bring out
pots and pans from museums!
squeeze colors from roots to fill
the goat's eye
on tbe evergreen stone-canvas!
to cook fresh myt~s as tbey roast
the cow on the fire made by
rubbing stars

IT IS TIME FOR US TO ROLL OURSELVES INTO A FULLSTOP

AND WATCH THE BULLET REPLACE TH E SEED
THE BAYONET THE PADDY STALK
IT IS TIME FOR US TO TELL OUR nULDREN TO TELL
THEIR CHILDREN THAT ASTRONAUTS WERE
DINOSAURS. AND SCIENCE. PORNOGRAPHY
1/

goodbye, my love. the cart

comes/
these bullocks drive me
to the new hell.
upon my grave do not sow flowers
or grapes
nor empty your sad brown and common eyes
i, bave forgotten all / and
your little feet
grow smaller

rare winds bl ow bere

ringing bells of your silence.
listen, tbe barking dogs; come away.
thru tbis blurr'd murkiness i hear wolves/
my worms have left for fresher corpse.
we sball kiss, undisturbed, just this once
and close ourselves to the madman nigbt

togetber

we shall roam a cadenced world

between water and music/
with the eclipse i'U follow your footprints
down the balfshades . . . ..... ...... into tbe valley
and as tbe western sun dawns at sunset
toucb your untouched palms

FIVE POEMS FROM

 IX

by evening's low tides

with the help of a mouthless wind
grave my body
small as stitches

and leave me there.

someone give the birds, grain;
till that old swooping vulture
ascends . . .

when j'm about to embark

hush away her griefstricken tree
from near my pillow-
and break the bottled clouds
then guide her gently
thru ways of summer-rock
and winter root
and bring her here

so i can look from the thickly

ticking wells,
a face, clockless
and calm with my rainbow-blood

let her still hands help me

to the shrouded barge; and who
will tell those thieves not to fish
for my ashes, in the cutglass-river

instead of oars, give me a mirror;

and with death for a loud sail
shall row
towards one dim egyptian gulf

~CHC:HIC]fAK1~A'
XlII XIV

Quick stalks thighs warm yards no longer bound to the rise

wind a dove-driven chariot an icelogged
island rattling snowcage dancing apes,
my coagulated hours untamed serpents
her window shut and sahara-covered pair
of vacumn-eyes.
and set and the hail and shine
i took a rainbow out of night
and climbed the cursed noon
to melt and marry to his darkest ray
so sow the sun with seeds

Between centipede-veins uncoiled at least to wear the wound-white robe,

burns the stove of sadness torn the frock
of limbs leaning on madness hair on rain
stabbed by clock-strokes stitched
in a sack buried to wolves tied
tortured by pale touch frozen to the
red tree one withered gardner plucks.
Smoke-entangled still-born
hell-hole flame-nailed ,a dim-smouldering home
and nearness all ago.
rattle dungeons in the sky,
and bleed five-finger-flowers
or bitches on the ivory cross
ahoy! to depth's witch-crafted fears.
bury one dream-worn hand
and age-dawned hair
and holding the harp of vowels
quick the plundered ocean

The Ocean forgets his worn bag-a-tricks.

Death in its thirty-ninth wink.

An escaped voice pulls in

with the tide. Dawn reappears with his
trident. The nun-faced moon collects her
psalms. And, from-mausolean-mountains-
unleashcd-by-stiff-volcanic-arms gallop-
the-thigh- released -riders-of-sun-
night-1lesh-sea-to-tear-time-
and-crack-doom.

XVII
image- groin'd
and sea-tress'd
a monthless woman her ode-fill'd hour.
tick-tock and sentry-marching time
lark - breasted
and season-mated
in a castle of waves her wedding.
tick-tock and sentry-marcbing time
exiled to elba on a three-legged day
sbe picks
her smog-gray hair.
tick- tock and sentry-marching time
upon sand-lock'd shores
clank her handcuff'd eyes.
the winds swirl, and sink.
tick- tock and sentry-marching time
a murder'd bird sbe walks in sleep;
swallow-made summers gone tock
-tick
and sentry-marching time
FOR HART CRANE
On April 27, 1932, a few moments before noon, Hart Crane
walked to the stern of the ORIZABA. The ship was about
three hundred miles north of Havana, leaving the warm
waters which fifteen years before he had first known and
sung as mYlhic haven of rest. He took off his coat
quietly, and leaped.
- from 'Hart Crane' by Waldo Frank
i have lost a bird called i
and this slowly frozen stage
is melting around me or my
beats flickering like lame pendulums;
violins play upon my nerve, x-rays
blossom in my lung, someone
has left me a cow-shaped stone
a hoof of thaw and a bell of mud
where is my bird called i
crows stare from the window dead
heavy-claw'd hours
raven-like sit, brood, and do not
stir; dusk droops; feathers gleam
to illuminate this standium:
a drizzle of asb and coal
on this bone-studded paralytic back
which way has my i-bird flown
grass tombs catch fire, a broken hen
lays in a cactus shell,
ODe autumn- candle gi gles
brown wax teeth, cosmos
leans like pisa. wbere is the be-bird
who wore black's unsinking colour,
chirped his bugle, swung his limb
and . was last seen happy
over the sbort-sighted sea
playing patience
with a heart-hungry shark
DEMON LOVER

Older than bark or bone, he now leaves, LEFTOVERS

followed by his convoy of tides ;
and a long line of crawling stars
move into the moon's pyramid

His arm is lilted

over the blown bridge,
he floats autumnal
on a raft of burning river trees

Calling out to a dogdom

which wags like a thrice-bit sun,
he echoes his aesop
and merry are the rabid leaves.

Come again; 0 come again

he whistles; a mud swan
raises her head ; and fhh
are wriggling in his bent sea.
Four feet and a
fleeing whisper; branches
lower their hearts; he picks
up horizon's vein.
The topsy winds are turvy
sailing his equatorial skull,
and waterweeds are busy
quietening the rumbled deep
We called him Landlord Madman
and he is going away,
he lived there in that
lighthouse of whales.
He came one dawn
to make birds with his hair,
shape roots with his I!yes,
and you fish are the words he spoke.
The illfated hulk of Eternity lands
an old crumpled belly,
some weed-sowing mermaid has her hair
forced with twigs
and a heavy wound explodes
inside her fort of blood.
The heartbeak Stops.
Below float stray towers of sand,
chess-kings, square pyramids.
My bachelor-ghost feeds alone
on the moon shot like a rabbit, on
Nuts & Roses. Hemlock & Cud. Chews
an hour from hell-brewn winds.
Deep-born shred of Twilight
dangles over the lifted and hairless
ape of water, as coastal buttocks scowl.
The green wave thinks. The blue one feels.
Killers thrive. And everyman
marries his own vulture.
AN APPENDIX

Seeing a depth Your eyes shut

Different from the Dead Sea's And you'll reach the
depth house of
I move towards the river's The Woman of Twenty Five Trees
Fiery udder I've asked her to give you

With me are masks Shelter and a lamp

Of trees, the age of dust, the At night again the quick
serpent's ears Scorpion
Leaves with fingerprints and one May attack you and if
Mad corpse He sees your palms

Overgrown with grass Bleeding his venom

I'm leaving behind the rocks to Will turn vicious and his sting
wrestle lengthen
With a sculptor's hammer and first- You must leave before dawn keeping
Born shapes the sea Watch over the dark sky

Himself did chisel For my mossage

why my childhood saw those With sunrise a bright arrow shall
nun-shaped ghosts appear
wby sunsets are so scaring and Over the eastern h~rizon
what happened And that's the sign

To the forest and the thin arrow shall

Of naked panthers feeding upon Pierce your by-then-rounded womb
a raw for a full
Dream are questions for the Grown ten-limbed ten-faced ten-tongued
Earth to answer Woman to emerge

For I must leave Dancing drumming the

The overrun dog's bark to lumpen Sky's dark hide wearing a garland
in tbe air of fifty four
To those nine vultures sitting patiently Heads and seeing her your face will
On a nearby branch At once turn ashen and
Old age already points Your body be the warm urn
Its Buddhist finger and youth shows Then a conch shall blow across the
her incestuous rose five drifting
But you must get back to tend the Continents, oceans, the subterranean
Flower-pots where I've and air-borne kingdoms
Planted sleep Announcing
To keep watch over my A man woman and
sand-feathered child
Bird and her rain-gripped cage Born of seedless
You walk that sea-hidden road Fertility
II
In the distance Storm-torn trees
My river appears pushing Their roots merry in the
behind the wind
Sea with its large branched feet And (uneral pyres pushing shadows into
Slipping past The watery spaces
The thighs of a A head the sea-
Mediaeval fort and shaking off tbe Horse rides the pyramid and
boats engineers
Which try to hold its loose waters Embalm tbe river's madness
Together as hairpins As it fl ows through
It then flings its The dial of a large clock
Arms around the white mountain And just before tbe endless doorway
helpessly a small fish
My eyes have become wells, windows Comes and points out tlie
and waterfalls at once Country of
And frozen I melt The Big-Fisted Fish
My way along the sunken [n a lane between two iocebergs
cOfndnrs she says
Of this blue- throated and lock-born river Seven of her children
Which touches Have been shot
The daily sun It's not for me
I'm given an oar of weeds and To help you I tell her
flattened bone I'm late
And the bell around my neck is wrung Already the la st flood
By him whose umbrella Approaches
Is the hood of a snake But here's a
I sit on the st0mach of a whir- Water- wreath you can
pool lay
And sink my boat and rivers flow On the tomb of an Unknown
Beneatb the water Soldier
Now green-legged I now feel
Spiders mating in sand- The touch of broad-limbed
castles fires
Pleasure boats stili screaming And in my eyes tbe rush
For the shore of unbodied wings
Dead pilgrims And the hour-
Heads of cattle turned to Choked volcano I've carried
pebbles upon me
Boulders the mountain has flung Warms and tben slowly
In anguish Erupts
 t

.,

EPILOGUES

, .
If the dllors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to ':'an as it is, infiinite.
t

, For man has closed himself lip, till he sees all things thr/)' narrow chinks of his cavern. WILLIAM BLAKE

I

For just as the children's crusade may be said to t.ypify the Middle Ages, -precocious children are typical of the
present age. Tnfact one is tempted to ask whether Ihere is a singl~ man feft ready, for once, to commit an
outrageous folly : Nowadays 170t . eve" a ' Silicide kills himself in desperation. SOREN KTERKEGAARD

The painter HENRI ROUSSEAU died last wefk in Paris, a retired employee of the toll set;vice who for many years
exhibited regularly at the Salon de Jlldepet(dants alld the Salon d'Automne paintings whose naive composition won
hinl a certain notoriety. Chronique des Arts, 1910

There are no great men save the poel, the priest, and the soldier.

The man who sings; the man .who offers up sacrifice and the man who'sacrifices himself.
~

The rest are born for the whip.

Let us beware of the rabble, of common-sense, good-nature, inspiration, and evidence. CHARLES BAUDllLAIRE

Every holy thing wishing to remain holy surrounds itself with mystery. STEPHANE MALLARME

The place of the gods or of any oth~r external entity or reality is now occupied by the word. The poem has no
.. exterior object or reference; the reference of a word is another . word. Thus, the problem of poetry's meaning
becpmes 'clepr only when one observes that the meaning is not outside of the poem but within: not in what th~
words say, but in wbat is ..aid between tbem. . OCTAVIO PAZ
, !
SURREALISM, n. Pure psychi" auto'tnatism, by which is ill tended to eXpress, verbally, in wriling, or by other
means, the real proce;s of thought. Thoughi'. dictation. in the vbsence of all control exerciset;l by the reason
and outside all aeslheti. or moral preoccupati~ns. It tends definitely to do Ql~ay with all other psychiu mech~nisms
and t6 substitute itself for them i~ the soilition of the principal problems of life. AN DRE BRETON

Compound Words ,in Dylan Thomas's Early Poems: Alliterative five-falhomed, sky-scraping, grave-gabbing,
hemlock-headed, tree-tailed, sea-straw, sea-sawers, whale-weed, sea-struck, topsy-lurvies, Tom-thumb, tell-tale,
. grave-gr.oping, fair-formed, hard-held, sky"signs, come-a-cropper, hairy-heeled, windiveli, scythe-sided,Jour-
{ruited, dog-dayed, man-melting, sea-slicked, tomorrow-treading.
t
I caredfor the colours the words cast on my eyes. DYLAN THOMAS

Dal1'!n Tagore. We -got out three good books, Sturge Moore alld I, and then because he thought it ;"ore important
to see ana know English than to be a great poet, he brought out sentimental rubbish and wrecked his reputation.
Tagore does not know English, no Indian knows English. Nobody can wrile with music and style in a language
not learned in childhood and ever since the language of thi3 thought. WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Bad writing comesfrom insufficient curiosity. EZRA POUND

/