Murali Sivaramakrishnan— poet, painter, professor and literary critic, is the author of The Mantra of Vision (1997), Learning to Think Like Myself (2010), Communication, and Clarification: Essays on English in the Indian Classroom (2014), and a number of critical essays and six volumes of poetry. As artist and poet he is a committed environmentalist. His paintings have gone on display at several major exhibitions. He is a member of the scientific committee of English Studies, University of Valladolid, Spain. He was also a Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Teen Murti, New Delhi, and an Associate of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. He is member and coordinator of research of the Herman Hesse Society of India. Dr S Murali is the founder President of ASLE India. Murali’s Nature and Human Nature: Literature, Ecology, Meaning (2009) is a pioneering work on Indian ecocriticism. Its sequel, Ecological Criticism for Our Times: Literature, Nature and Critical Inquiry (2011)–ASLE India’s second book—has also received high accolades. He was awarded a Fulbright Postdoctoral Travel Grant to teach and do research in the University of Nevada at Reno(2006), and was invited to read his poems as part of the inauguration of the International Conference on Poetic Ecologies, held in the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, in May 2008. Murali’s sculpture (cast in fibre) of Prof CD Narasimhaiah, now adorns the conference hall of Dhvanyaloka, Mysore. Murali was featured as Poet-Artist in Indian Literature, Jan-Feb 2010, 255, pp. 127-132. The books he has authored include: South Indian Studies (Ed) (1998); Figuring the Female: Women’s Discourse, Art and Literature (2005)’ Tradition and Terrain: Aesthetic Continuities. (both co-authored with Dr. Usha V.T.); Ecological Criticism for Our Times: Literature, Nature and the Critical Inquiry (2011); Under the Greenwood Tree: Reading for Pleasure and Comprehension (Ed) Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2011; Image and Culture: The Dynamics of Literary, Aesthetic and Cultural Representation (2011); Inter-Readings: Text, Context, Significance. Ed. (2012); Communication, and Clarification: Essays on English in the Indian Classroom, 2014; Sri Aurobindo’s Aesthetics and Poetics: New Directions, 2014; Strategies and Methods: Relocating Textual Meaning, 2018; Losing Nature, 2018 and Roads to Nowhere, 2019. Awards include the Life-Time Achievement Award for Poetry by GIEWEC, Guild of Indian English Writers, Editors and Critics, 2014. And IMRF Excellence Award, 2015. His poetry volumes include Night Heron (1998); Conversations with Children (2005); Earth Signs (2006); The East-Facing Shop (2010); Selected Poems (2014) and Silverfish (2016). Contact: smurals@gmail.com
Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>
Wooden Puppet
Stooping below the wrinkled branches
My shadow entangles in corner-less turns.
Breathless curvature of a missing moon under purple clouds–
Do I know how to stand and breathe beside the dead?
Clothed in sheathes of white, the body is laid heavy under flowers.
Flies dance at will on nose and finger tips, turning up eyelids
That refuse to break even with light.
Smoothing down the stony palms. No more sweat, nor tears.
Like the tree uprooted in the night rains, shivering
In the dark, no star to blink and whisper to the shapeless earth.
Many men and women have gathered down the streets and children
Run about at will still less caring.
A man is like the tree at night when the soul is flown
Whisked away by the sharp slither of a chain saw, split and spewed
Into the casual fire by hands that knew his touch, his caress.
The tree bears the landscape of silence like the mind
That closes the will and whispers—will I see it all again?
Will the lightning part my skies at will and split the rainbow
Into a thousand colours? Will the children run round and round
Playing hide and seek in the day’s sweetness and delight?
What will can touch my annual rings, saturated in sunlight ?
Anyway, how long can this night last?
The dead do not walk again, neither does the tree
That lies stripped of its bark naked to the skies.
I feel fear gather up my legs and reach into the heart
I touch the dead tree bark, sink and shiver in another night.
As the chain saw slides on the bark the living light is split.
Tell me: I still do not know how to stand and breathe before the dead.
The Slant of the Sunlight
The day picks its way
on soft toes, sparing the dried leaves
floating around the yard.
The sun too does not stray
too far from this end of the sky.
My eye can travel only this far
like the faint summer slip of moon–
a delicate trace on that western sky.
Under each grain of sand
Under each sliver of grass
Last night’s rain has hid fragments of opulence.
Can I invert this light beam
And reach the farthest star?
Little said, the rain whispers
There is so much distance between me and you
The Gladiator
Many things are left unsaid
Like the pausing crest of the wave, the closing flower
Sea and sand in one corner of the left eye
And huge mountains dancing on tiptoe
On the far corner of the right eye.
A red ant turns savage as its mouth parts
Open and close twice before I know on my leg
I feel the pangs of the centuries, the great war-crimes,
Many a hero’s passion.
A child’s fancy balloon
On the beach bursts with the suddenness of a loud thunder
And my insides lunge downwind blown to smithereens
By the blasts planned and unplanned on innocent streets
What is it that I see flapping its huge wings in the distance
Its shades closing the sun and sky? How many dragon flies
Have flitted across the deserts after the first monsoons?
Do I recall the spell and charm when as a child I caught them
And tied a tiny thread to their tender tails; were the skies bluer then than now?
Masked shadows and blood-winged, fire-breathing monsters
Now pattern the tapered vault. Nothing is simple anymore.
A child’s cry spells disaster, a woman’s yell a scream of distress
A howl the dull end of the world.
Laughter and tears have spread wings of fear and fantasy.
I too am a naked gladiator shuffling under the glare of a thousand eyes
In horrendous battle with invisible creatures of the dark
Armed in fear and dread. Only a dim distant bird song—
Like the haunting melody of my desire and hope.
Yes. Like many things let me leave some things unsaid.
After all, we walk on the borderlands of hope.
Published on April 12, 2020. © Author.