Editor's Note:
Armadillo and Mink appear in the Spring 2007 edition of Connecticut Review. Shankar read Dirge and Canticle in Memoriam, for the 2005 Tsunami victims,
during the kickoff program for the 10th annual IMPAC-CSU Young Writers competition Jan. 19 at Naugatuck High School. Shankar will serve as co-master of ceremonies for the annual dinner June 1 at the Litchfield Inn.
Armadillo
Encrusted in granulated bands, parabolic
but for a tail tapered to an awl, methodical,
hairy-bellied, lizard-clawed, descended,
according to wheezy diner folklore,
from fugitives broken out of a traveling
circus that toured Smyrna in the thirties
with flatcars full of animal curiosities
and cirqueros, like the Human Volcano,
or achondroplastic dwarves who juggled
on top of hippos. Only the nine-banded
armadillos escaped. Still scour parched
earth for ants. No answer but in themselves.
Mink
Skittish-eyed, fleet of paw, dens in drift
piles or stream banks, stealthy, circumspect,
prowling the dark shore on paws alone,
hunting muskrat, crayfish, frog, skulking
miles at a time in night's percussion
section, pelt glistening even after the moon
slides from sight, more lustrous submerged,
a bolt of brown darkening under the water,
a crepuscular muscle uncoiling, emerging
to forage in forests led by a leash of scent.
Solitary codger, lithe, furbearing, thorough,
wanted for earmuffs and by horned owls.
Dirge and Canticle in Memoriam
For the tsunami victims, 2005
-the earth, like its inhabitants, is stitched
together in pieces, plates that rift in time
might move a centimeter in a year,
else suddenly judder fifteen meters in half
a second, triggering walls of water
that first recede like intake of breath-
how many breaths permeate each second
-a stretch of sea no eyes should behold
exposing glistening kelp, convulsive fish,
sedimentary curiosities, bits of bracken,
drawing onlookers on when they should be
fleeing for higher ground-
when warning should have sounded
-a stretch of sea accelerated to Lear
jet speed, overflowing the shore in hissing
torrents to uproot trees, topple minarets,
smash sewers, tear railroad trestles into snarls
of metal, splintering, rending, dragging
object or person with such force
no formula can fathom, no theologian
adequately explicate-
how render that force without making it aesthetic
-there's no adequate word for grief
pushed up against the very edge
of the unutterable like a doorstop.
There's no song that could begin
to placate, but we will lift our voices
in chorus together nonetheless-
prayer is intention
raised to a sharp note's keenness
song is a flare shot from dark to dark
a tendril
-for the Buddhist,
everything is impermanent
except Dharma and one never knows
when the next wave may come-
storm hands abrade the horizon
there is nothing you can do
about the world
except to let it go
-for the Christian, nature's wrath
arrives to remind each soul it must repent-
cursed is the ground
for your sake
both thorns and thistles
shall it bring forth for you
-for the Hindu, reincarnation's chakra
spins from destruction to creation,
and back again, until all beings
return to blissful source-
luminous is Brahman who dwells
in the cave of the heart
far beyond what is far
yet here very near at hand
-for the Muslim, the Divine Essence
is immanent and beyond imagining,
forbidden for us even to ponder-
there is no god but God
-for the Humanist, suffering matters
not to the earth's molten core;
only survivors have something to recover-
based on geotechnical analysis
the release of stresses between plates
is responsible for the magnitude
-for the Sri Lankan girl who has lost
her family, whose school has been razed,
the rice paddies she helped cultivate
submerged in fetid water, the village
littered with glass-shards, car parts,
rotting carcasses of stray dogs,
none of these explanations suffice-
water's susurrus will never sound the same
what has been lost will never be found
-let this music stand on her behalf,
prayer, tendril, flare and song
beating salt on the shore to the time
of an individual heartbeat
multiplied by two hundred thousand
and pressed in our minds like grooves
in vinyl, like mountain ranges in the air-
that it might have been us
except for a toss of dice
-a song whose pitched notes
preserve the undulation of fishing boats
tied to the dock, the feel of sand grains
against the soles of children's feet,
the aroma of mustard seed and coriander
simmering in oil, the curve of a domed
mosque against reddening sky, snippets
of Urdu, Indonesian, Tamil, Thai-
the bones of bodies were made
from stars
we're not so different
you and I
-there's no adequate word for grief
but we will lift our voices
in chorus together nonetheless-
Ravi Shankar is poet-in-residence and assistant professor of English at Central Connecticut State University. Shankar is the author of Instrumentality, a collection of poems published by Cherry Grove Collections in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has served as a judge in the IMPAC-CSU competition for several years and was keynote speaker in 2005.
He is a founding editor of the online journal of the arts "Drunken Boat"(http://www.drunkenboat.com). Among many awards won by Shankar are the Gulf Coast Poetry Prize and the Bennett Prize for Poetry at Columbia University. His critical work has appeared in Poets & Writers, Time Out New York, The Iowa Review, and The AWP Writer's Chronicle.
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