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Short Prayer
Drawn from Hong Kong International Poetry Nights 2011, Short Prayer is a chapbook of poetry in English by Vivek Narayanan, accompanied by Chinese translations. Short Prayer is also available along with the works of other internationally renowned poets in Words and the World (Twenty-volume Set) . Selected poems from this volume are featured in the anthology Words and the International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong .
34 pages, Paperback
First published April 10, 2012
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January 25, 2022
Short Prayer to Sound
Sound has the particular quality of being visible. It is the greater god. Vision, in evening's fog, presents a man on the cycle with his newspaper bags, the threaded breeze of his hair, even the holes of his eyes; yet, though riveting, vision knows nothing of pain.
Sound does, for sound is pain, curled and garbled by the ganglia, stunned and suppressed, dim and thundering from some secret window. Never regular, though it may sometimes seem so. Never present, though it may seem. Rivet of moment to moment. A sack on the face with holes to see.
Imprecise as a world seen through cloth, ease of the friend that follows. Agony internal to the shape of the amphora. The tinier holes through which a quality refines. A private lack, a riveting in some riveting act.
What does sound carry? It will not tell. It refuses to be known. So close to us, clinging, it will not tell. Mr. Subramanian wants to gather memories in its sack, as if memories in the brain's shifting imagos had actually the tangible quality of being gatherable. Alas, sound is forgetting. It has already been forgotten. It is the hole into which all knowhow disappears. The hole we can only call: the future.
Yet, like peas in a pod, like arguments in the agora, it follows tracks.
* * *
Short Prayer to the Economy
prayers for fishers, tossed each to each in translucent glue
prayers for the hairier beasts, roistering in rolling tundra
if we are to conceive a world, let us conceive it - at all risk - one
prayers for the wily bicycle, knight of secular propulsion
prayers for uncoagulated human residue impossible to weigh in balance
and our economy that intricate grows, beyond forebearance
I've found I don't know I need I to know who can I talk to who can I call what must I do where must I put it how can I use it what is your number who will you call where ill we go how will we make it where will we put it who can I finger how will they take it where is the button how can I find it how did her get there who does he know what can it do where does it go how do you work it what will it work take what it will work it you do how does it where what can it do who does he know who did he get there how did he find it how is the button where will they take it how can I finger who will we put it where make it how we will go where call I can who talk to I who can to know I need I know I don't I found I feed
prayers for the musical crow, the intimate mosquito, whose kisses are here to stay
prayers for the contract killer, the contractual signer, unspeakable unimpeachable bond
and our shared godless theology that hooks day to day
prayers for all projectile, red, yellow - somewhat bluish, spinning inert, riskily pulsed -
prayers for gashes of quarried stone, saunas of smelted aluminum, ever thinning veins of copper
from where the monstrous weather grows
Feed I found I don't know I need I know to can who I to talk who can I call what I must I do where put I must how number who what you call where go will we how it make where it put we will who finger I can how it take they will where button the is how it find he did how there get he did who know he does who do it can what where it does how do you it work will it what take work it will what it work you do go it does where do it can what know he does who there get he did how it find I can how button the is where it take they will how finger i can who it put we will where it make we will how go we will where call you will who number your is what use I can how put it I must where do I must what call I can who talk I can who know to I need I know don't I found I've
prayer for the intestinal tract, whose winding roads grow hidden
prayers for the rickety aeroplane, suspended in the air
the prickly fog will take us, will all of us be spared
prayers for every scrawny stick uncountable, each that I know by name
prayers for the murderous author, the deadened reader, the wakening good
and lastly that arithmetic not of our making, its obsolete fire
* * *
Short Prayer to the Moon
Moon, though your energies be uncertain, I beseech you, protect him, protect all of us, from our nightly visions.
May the hero and the murderer withdraw gently from this, our despairing prescript.
May daylight return.
May we drink from the cup of gratitude.
May we last long enough to make note of our error.
Though burdened by knowledge, may we walk out into the open.
Though burdened by knowledge, may the clouds life from our eyes.
Hour by hour, may we learn to free ourselves from prayer.
* * *
Three Elegies for Silk Smitha
She's the slut
among white hippies on the beach,
around the campfire, hot pants
and an upright ponytail
for style; she's the dancer
in metallic feathers
and red plastic shoes. Foil
to the gangster's drink,
blackmailer's bait, the woman
you never brought home
to mother, she is
and is not
the salt of what she is.
*
At eleven I didn't know a woman's body
could be different. I didn't know
what my body could do. I watched
terrified, tranquilized. It was early
for irony. Later without yet a jot
of post-colonial theory I knew
that this was kitsch. I was leery of her
and of the Dancing Queens of TVZ
who wore tennis shoes below their skirts,
but I remembered enough to know she had it,
a shimmer, a handslap, a match's flame.
*
My last of her is borrowed too. She hangs
from the fan of a bright North Madras apartment
a thin white cotton sari wrapped
around a blouse equally white; invisible
by implication, as always was
her way. A note in Telugu says, "I
was an uneducated woman. No one
loves me." Woman
of the famous breasts and thighs and
the only seductive eyes, you were
the secret darling of Censor Board
auditoriums - capacious
and full of faces turned
from the projection's
breaching beamlight.
Sound has the particular quality of being visible. It is the greater god. Vision, in evening's fog, presents a man on the cycle with his newspaper bags, the threaded breeze of his hair, even the holes of his eyes; yet, though riveting, vision knows nothing of pain.
Sound does, for sound is pain, curled and garbled by the ganglia, stunned and suppressed, dim and thundering from some secret window. Never regular, though it may sometimes seem so. Never present, though it may seem. Rivet of moment to moment. A sack on the face with holes to see.
Imprecise as a world seen through cloth, ease of the friend that follows. Agony internal to the shape of the amphora. The tinier holes through which a quality refines. A private lack, a riveting in some riveting act.
What does sound carry? It will not tell. It refuses to be known. So close to us, clinging, it will not tell. Mr. Subramanian wants to gather memories in its sack, as if memories in the brain's shifting imagos had actually the tangible quality of being gatherable. Alas, sound is forgetting. It has already been forgotten. It is the hole into which all knowhow disappears. The hole we can only call: the future.
Yet, like peas in a pod, like arguments in the agora, it follows tracks.
* * *
Short Prayer to the Economy
prayers for fishers, tossed each to each in translucent glue
prayers for the hairier beasts, roistering in rolling tundra
if we are to conceive a world, let us conceive it - at all risk - one
prayers for the wily bicycle, knight of secular propulsion
prayers for uncoagulated human residue impossible to weigh in balance
and our economy that intricate grows, beyond forebearance
I've found I don't know I need I to know who can I talk to who can I call what must I do where must I put it how can I use it what is your number who will you call where ill we go how will we make it where will we put it who can I finger how will they take it where is the button how can I find it how did her get there who does he know what can it do where does it go how do you work it what will it work take what it will work it you do how does it where what can it do who does he know who did he get there how did he find it how is the button where will they take it how can I finger who will we put it where make it how we will go where call I can who talk to I who can to know I need I know I don't I found I feed
prayers for the musical crow, the intimate mosquito, whose kisses are here to stay
prayers for the contract killer, the contractual signer, unspeakable unimpeachable bond
and our shared godless theology that hooks day to day
prayers for all projectile, red, yellow - somewhat bluish, spinning inert, riskily pulsed -
prayers for gashes of quarried stone, saunas of smelted aluminum, ever thinning veins of copper
from where the monstrous weather grows
Feed I found I don't know I need I know to can who I to talk who can I call what I must I do where put I must how number who what you call where go will we how it make where it put we will who finger I can how it take they will where button the is how it find he did how there get he did who know he does who do it can what where it does how do you it work will it what take work it will what it work you do go it does where do it can what know he does who there get he did how it find I can how button the is where it take they will how finger i can who it put we will where it make we will how go we will where call you will who number your is what use I can how put it I must where do I must what call I can who talk I can who know to I need I know don't I found I've
prayer for the intestinal tract, whose winding roads grow hidden
prayers for the rickety aeroplane, suspended in the air
the prickly fog will take us, will all of us be spared
prayers for every scrawny stick uncountable, each that I know by name
prayers for the murderous author, the deadened reader, the wakening good
and lastly that arithmetic not of our making, its obsolete fire
* * *
Short Prayer to the Moon
Moon, though your energies be uncertain, I beseech you, protect him, protect all of us, from our nightly visions.
May the hero and the murderer withdraw gently from this, our despairing prescript.
May daylight return.
May we drink from the cup of gratitude.
May we last long enough to make note of our error.
Though burdened by knowledge, may we walk out into the open.
Though burdened by knowledge, may the clouds life from our eyes.
Hour by hour, may we learn to free ourselves from prayer.
* * *
Three Elegies for Silk Smitha
She's the slut
among white hippies on the beach,
around the campfire, hot pants
and an upright ponytail
for style; she's the dancer
in metallic feathers
and red plastic shoes. Foil
to the gangster's drink,
blackmailer's bait, the woman
you never brought home
to mother, she is
and is not
the salt of what she is.
*
At eleven I didn't know a woman's body
could be different. I didn't know
what my body could do. I watched
terrified, tranquilized. It was early
for irony. Later without yet a jot
of post-colonial theory I knew
that this was kitsch. I was leery of her
and of the Dancing Queens of TVZ
who wore tennis shoes below their skirts,
but I remembered enough to know she had it,
a shimmer, a handslap, a match's flame.
*
My last of her is borrowed too. She hangs
from the fan of a bright North Madras apartment
a thin white cotton sari wrapped
around a blouse equally white; invisible
by implication, as always was
her way. A note in Telugu says, "I
was an uneducated woman. No one
loves me." Woman
of the famous breasts and thighs and
the only seductive eyes, you were
the secret darling of Censor Board
auditoriums - capacious
and full of faces turned
from the projection's
breaching beamlight.
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