# Indian Poems

- Link: https://writersworkshopindia.com/2019/06/26/indian-poems/
- Published: 2019-06-26T03:27:54+00:00
- Author: shuktara

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**Author:** Didier Coste 
**Pages:** 68**Year of Publication:** 2019**Price:** Rs
250 / € 12**ISBN:**978-93-5045-198-4 (9789350451984)**_About the Author_**Born in
1946, Didier Coste is a French and Australian trilingual writer, translator, cultural
theorist and Emeritus Professor of Comparative Literature. A frequent visitor to
India, he has been twice a Fellow of the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced 
Study (Jawaharlal Nehru University) and a guest of Jadavpur University, Delhi University
and the University of Rajasthan.His poetry in English includes _Vita Australis_,
bilingual edition (Wild &Woolley, Sydney, 1977), _Anonymous of Troy_ (Puncher and
Wattmann, Sydney, 2015) and _An American Trilogy_ (_Opus 15, The Reading Pavilion,
Sounds Saved_), forthcoming in the USA.

His poetry collections in French have been published by various major publishers
since 1963 and selected poems, especially sonnets, are to be found in the pages 
of _Po&sie_, the leading poetry journal of France since the 1980s. He has translated
into French Sethu’s famous short novel, _Pandavapuram_, Latin American and North
American fiction and essays and Spanish, English and Catalan poetry. He has also
written French and bilingual fiction (published in Paris) and a play (published 
in Switzerland).

Coste’s critical and theoretical work bears on literary aesthetics, narrative theory,
romance, the poetics of formal poetry and translation theory. _Narrative as Communication_
was published by the University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, in 1989. He is 
currently co-editing _Migrating Minds_, a collection of essays on cultural cosmopolitanism
and completing _Conversations with Hanuman_, a selection of his essays on modern
and contemporary Indian literatures from a comparative perspective. 
**_Teaser_**
_A tale of two mountains_ The same mountain, although into its image nowso thoroughly
changed, unrecognizable awaitshere nearby—that is nowhere to be mentioned,looms 
in the contraptions of the poetic mind.

The other mountain, for it is not of the same kind
but suddenly new and raw with
fir trees scarredby fire, discovers its awfully sweet impatienceto dream itself 
again where it was never sighted.Pyrénées and Himal, can they sing of one voice?
they do not rejoice of one bell, Nature celebratesnot their hymen, but the parallel
union of snowwith black rock, white wool yarn with loom.

Shyamala and Mary would not drape in one silk,
we know, but we’ll kiss their different
footprintson the same boulders so far apart, the day looksolder than it should when
any bird is killed.

And there is this irreducible expectation of art
like a leaf carefully shaped and
about to fallin the lap of the same streams, the fiery birdsheavier than air—that
can fly on the one wing.

An endless string of halls and castles was raised
between there that sometimes you
flee and herewhere I never landed, their weathercocks rustywith waiting for the 
breath of a warmer wind.

Why revel in the stale aftermath of summer rains
the one, of August drought the 
other, why smotherwith doubt the plain view of cascading valleys?Of your skies mine
are the tally, eyes that see.

The mountain and the plain may not be the same,
but in verse they will parade as
if of one world,one estate, one path of patience, still untouchedby plough or spade,
both innocent, both so proud.

Rains, we both know, do not belong to clouds,
to thunder that tears, or earth that
receives,nor do we belong to them, for such event we longand pine that on two mountains
pours its bounty.

You are their witness, you alone stand for them
and for me, for their same whiteness
and my nightsince one of them is your abode and the otherwithout you remains steeped
in its own thought.**_Contents_**_Foreword_ by Rukmini Bhaya Nair / 9_Author’s Preface_/
13I – POEMS OF THE CARNAL EDGE_The precession of love_ / 19Every note struck / 21A
scene with one elephant / 23A tale of two mountains / 25Hanuman in Mumbai (a letter
to Saraswati) / 27Another pilgrim / 29Kali yuga / 31Twin mandala / 33Special darshan/
35Nirvasan / 37Vac / 39Parashakti / 41Ghat / 43Secluded life / 45Two mountains two/
47II – DESI DEVIBorn before Independence / 51Recreation of Vasant Vihar / 53Meditation
in a courtyard / 55Dry nullah / 57With nilgais, perhaps / 59DDA flats / 61Refillable
thali / 63