Vol. 4, Issue 2 February 2012
 
The Lede
End of Days
The Barefoot Balladeer
Time Travel
Diggi’s Days of Yore
Letters From
Israel, Nigeria
Perspectives
Politics
Misreading the Elections
Culture
The Indian Litfest Bug
Reporting & Essays
Reportage
The Defeated
Essay
Shelf Life
Arts & Reviews
Feature
So You Want to Be a DJ?
Art Review
Shots in the Dark
Books
Review
The Honey Gatherers
Essay
Clashing by Night
Editor's Notebook
Irrationally exposed at the Expo

Fiction & Poetry


 

Poetry

Soleá: from Lyon to Angers
Published :1 August 2010
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ECHOSTREAM
Phoenix in front, dragon on your back; both soared in that dance of solitude.
A wingtip shattered the moon that night: shards illumed your dance of solitude.

Onyx, obsidia’n glacier for muscle, bone and blood: in which chasm
was he forged? Whose the arms that raised him, this necromancer of solitude?

Delhi, Detroit, Forbach, Sydney? No, by a sleeted airstrip in Annecy,
on an aquamarine noon was first blood drawn by the lance of solitude.

Look carefully and you can spy them everywhere: in bedrooms, on beaches
and battlefields. The time has come to globalise the brands of Solitude!

There were so many roads from Lyon to Angers—highways, bylanes, and some
seasonal tracks through dreams—but none detoured the greygreen strands of solitude.

Chiselled with the heartbeat of her dancers are Sevilla’s streets, her heavens
arched by a spine; days spiralling back to flamenco’s trance of solitude.

Another age, another sphere. In Gent, Tomorrow flared in high-octane
whirls: half-faun, half-unicorn, tethered by a ruthless glance of solitude.

Across latitudes and almanacs they have prospered—poets, peddlers, priests,
palmists, songsters, also publishers—on the high finance of solitude.

We might have met under Dhaka skies, beside a marché in Nantes, Marseille?
But the EU in Brussels had blueprinted our romance of solitude.

Shrek it was, at the Cigale, that spilt amber from laughing eyes on the path
of raven seekers: their alloyed gaze dashed the happenstance of solitude.

Once more morning, once more Montréal: the words were calligraphed, then branded
on memory’s skin, “There will be no stemming the advance of solitude.”

Daughter of the Pleiades, born nomad, whom fate leads far from hearth and kin:
stellar forces play sentinel as you embrace a France of solitude.
 
 

Readers' Comments

Total Comments 2

Rosy
3 August 2010
05:16 PM
Beautiful! Some parts will need further explanation/contexts but the overall effect is breathtaking
 

pooja sudhir
1 August 2010
06:15 PM
the first stanza is the most aestheticized expression of solitude. There is a lot of inter textuality which might not be easy to decipher but its overall echo is amazing
 
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