National Poetry Month: A Different History

[brigdh]

A Different History by Sujata Bhatt

Great Pan is not dead;
he simply emigrated
       to India.
Here, the gods roam freely,
disguised as snakes or monkeys;
every tree is sacred
and it is a sin
to be rude to a book.
It is a sin to shove a book aside
       with your foot,
a sin to slam books down
       hard on a table,
a sin to toss one carelessly
       across a room.
You must learn how to turn the pages gently
without disturbing Sarasvati,
without offending the tree
from whose wood the paper was made.

2
Which language
has not been the oppressor's tongue?
Which language
truly meant to murder someone?
And how does it happen
that after the torture,
after the soul has been cropped
with a long scythe swooping out
of the conqueror's face -
the unborn grandchildren
grow to love that strange language.

Comments

[cellophane_ria.livejournal.com]

I LOVE April. :) Thank you!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hee! I'm so glad.

[weirdquark]

That is excellent.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I thought so too.

[hazard-us.livejournal.com]

I really like the lines about the sins against a book.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was my favorite part too. That and the last line.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

I love this poem! Where is it collected?

I do that with books - if I touch one with my foot by accident, I do a quick pranam i.e. touch it quickly to my head and heart. It's instinctual by now, but sometimes I wonder if it looks weird to outsiders - and attempt to make it surreptitious. That probably looks even weirder.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I don't know! I got it off a LJ community.

Heh, yeah, I have strange habits like that, too.