ARVIND KRISHNA MEHROTRA ~

A Hindu Panegyrist Remembers
Sultan Mahmud


The wasting disease was bad enough,

Then he started losing his mind.

Visiting the treasury the week he died,

His jewels on display, he broke down

And wept like a child. Newcomers

Won't believe it, but Ghazna used to be

A miserable little place, known only for

The sweetness of its melons, before he

Changed its face, gave it a skyline

To match Baghdad's. He also changed our lives.

Each year before the onset of winter

He'd set off on his Indian campaign,

And four months later, when he returned

In the spring, the camel trains carrying

The spoils of war took a day and a night

To go past my door. We sang his praises,

He didn't stint on the reward; gold mostly,

But sometimes a string of pearls

Or a silk robe, like the one I'm wearing.






Ear-Cleaning Man


Unlike the carder

And the caner,

The ear-cleaning man

Has no street cry.

To find him you

Only have to look

And he'll be there,

Sitting beside you

On upright crate

Or low wall, probing

Your waxy ear,

First one, then the other,

For you to hear

Your inner voice

The better with,

Before vanishing

As suddenly

As he'd appeared,

The hands free,

A small bag tucked

Under his arm,

And two needles

In his headband,

Like a pair of feelers.






Worker Ant


The few things it needs lie within

Walking distance: an insect wing,

A grain of sugar. Sometimes it takes

A Grand Tour of roadside litter,

Or goes hiking alone in shingle

Mountains, past thumbnail lakes.

Its happiest moments are at a jungle

Boot camp, crawling on twigs,

Struggling in a bog-hole under

The garden tap, pushing a grass blade

Ten times its size towards a towering

Clod of earth in the flowerbed.

I saw the grass move before I saw

Its mover, hiding in plain sight.

________________________
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
New York Review Books
2020

ARVIND KRISHNA MEHROTRA (2) ~

R E A D      M O R E

JOZEF CZAPSKI ~

R E A D      M E




New York Review of Books
2018

SILVINA OCAMPO ~

Fragrance

I who live close by

bear witness that at certain hours

of the night or day

it floods the areas of the square where it lives

and enters the windows of neighboring houses;

it's more important than the corporeal

beauty of the trees because even the blind can see it

through the illusion of perfume,

as through music.

Often, at any hour,

I tried like a sleuth to find where that heavenly

fragrance came from and I reached the conclusion

that it's simply like the soul

lodging nowhere and all about.

~





Love



I would like to be your favorite pillow

where you rest your ears at night

to be your secret and the fence

around your sleep; asleep or awake



to be your door, your light when you go away,

someone who does not try to be loved.

To escape the anxiety in my complaints,

and manage at times to be what I am; nothing,



never to be afraid of losing you

through fickleness and unfaithfulness,

nor pointlessly grant to you



the tedious, vulgar faithfulness

of those abandoned who prefer

to die instead of suffer, and do not die.

__________________________

Silvina Ocampo

translated from the Spanish by Jason Weiss

New York Review Books, 2015

http://www.nybooks.com/books/authors/silvina-ocampo/