சூர்ப்பதனு கடைசிக்கவிதை
மன்னவனும் நீயோ? வளநாடும் உனதோ? - கம்பர்
"மன்னவனும் நீயோ? வளநாடும் உனதோ?
உன்னை அறிந்தோ தமிழை ஒதினேன்?
என்னை விரும்பி எற்றுக்கொள்ளாத வேந்துண்டோ?
உண்டொ குரங்கேற்றுக்கொள்ளாத கொம்பு?"
*****
•rukmini-bhaya-nair/
மன்னவனும் நீயோ? வளநாடும் உனதோ? - கம்பர்
"மன்னவனும் நீயோ? வளநாடும் உனதோ?
உன்னை அறிந்தோ தமிழை ஒதினேன்?
என்னை விரும்பி எற்றுக்கொள்ளாத வேந்துண்டோ?
உண்டொ குரங்கேற்றுக்கொள்ளாத கொம்பு?"
*****
•rukmini-bhaya-nair/
http://www.poemhunter.com/rukmini-bhaya-nair/
Kali
A goddess chews on myth
As other women might on paan
Red juices stain her mouth.
Bored by her own powers
Immense and spectral, Kali broods
About Shiva, she is perverse.
She will not plead with him
Nor reveal Ganesha's birth
She will not ask him home.
Shiva loves her, but absences
And apsaras are natural to him
No god is hampered by his sins.
Kali desires a mortal, whose day
Begins with her, ends at nightfall
In her arms, a man who will die
Without her, whose love is fallible
But secure, she wants to be held
Like a warm creature, not a fable.
Loneliness drives this goddess mad
She is vagrant, her limbs askew
She begs a mate, her hair unmade.
Fickle as Shiva, memory deserts her
Chandi or Durga or Parvati, which
Is she, which of her selves weeps here?
Even Ganesha, for whom she feels
Only tenderness, excludes her, even he
Seems impatient with her flaws.
Where should such a goddess turn?
Kali, mistress of the temporal worlds
Wants bliss defined in human terms.
Staid Ganesha knows this wildness
Must be curbed, Shiva, peripatetic
Agrees, and across the wilderness
Both gift Kali a companion eagle, hurt
By no arrow, fed on nothing, it returns
Each night to its eyrie in her heart.
my son, not quite seven, said
It was a bad day at school
Six children cried
Why? Were they sick? Did teacher scold?
Which six?
Trinanjan
Ishita - two times Ishita!
Arjun
Jatin
Actually, three times Ishita!
I can't tell you about it
Why not?
Neha started it
Rahul and I ran away
It was a madhouse!
A madhouse? Viraj, tell Amma, please.
You'll scold me. It was in the break
Teacher wasn't there
Okay, don't tell me! You don't have to tell me.
They were talking about
Love.
Love?
My not-quite-seven son looks sheepish, then mulish
Yeah, love.
But why did everyone cry? Love is nothing
To cry about! Love's a happy thing
Viraj, you know that
dear god, how we lie to our children
my son, named for procreation
amalgam of wild Aryan rituals
my son, the first Vedic man
stares at me
his glowing rhesus eyes
full of candour, of trust
my son says
Neha said Trinanjan loves Lori
And then Trinanjan started crying
Ishita loves Subir. Everybody says she loves Subir
Even Devika loves Subir
And Ishita cried
Actually, Trinanjan loves Lori, but Lori
Doesn't love Trinanjan
So Trinanjan cried
And you, Viraj, whom do you love?
You know.
No, I don't. Who?
Neha.
And Neha? Does anyone else love Neha?
She loves me.
That's lucky. How do you love Neha, Viraj?
Do you play with her? Is she your special friend?
No, I just love her.
Viraj, why didn't you cry?
I was brave
yes you were brave, Viraj
you don't know just how brave
you'll have to be
it's a lonely business - this love
you were the first man, you ought to know
and then I think how primitive
this thing is, how old
what fires have burned for it
what fantailed dances it inspires
schooldays
neatly segmented into periods, subjects
Hindi, Maths, English
and something mysterious called E.V.S.
but all that method, that learning
those iterated aisles of desks
rows of little chairs
then come to this -
a break at high noon
at recess
Love breaks into that gap in the day
it holds its own classes
Erich Segal, sentimentaliser of a generation
you knew love was about crying, Ryan O'Neal
had to love Ali McGraw, if it was really
Love
you knew about the accusations, the guilt
but you had no inkling that all the schmaltz
the romance, begins with this instinct
for pairing
with recitations, incantations
encirclements
spells
Ne ha began it. It was a madhouse.
Trinanjan and Lori, Viraj and Neha, Ishita
and Subir, Subir and Devika, have they all
entered the madhouse?
Love
is not never having to says things
it is to say things, show things
over and over and over again
with all the desperate jazz at your disposal
see, that's Romeo on his bum guitar
and that's the moon, shameless mauve
riding the tide - and Neha
you can make out Neha
stirring her amateur brew
O Viraj, step back, step back
from the red-bottomed langur turn-ups
from the aggrieved jackal cries
from the kingfisher's Dionysiac blue
you are too young for a tragic hero
too young to die of natural causes
O Viraj - you are just too young for words!
words, even words
can tear you apart -
if those are all you have
but today my son Viraj, not quite seven
is indifferent to danger
he is brave
merged with the brilliant sky, the earth's
dark quilted bracken
he has become his first self -
three thousand, twelve thousand
a billion years old . . .
Let the wind blow through
Let the light in, you say
But this I cannot do.
My poems are heavy, dark shawls
Huddled in them, every season,
I'm obscure as a sibyl.
The hailstone syllables
Clatter
And melt.
When at nights you feel
On another's tongue
Slanderous asafoetida
Lime's quick murderous knife
Sliding in among
Wild strawberry orgies
Arabesques of garlic
Curvaceous around
The sentinel cloves
You wonder about desire
How it can be found
Delicate as rose water
Or frank as coriander
Rising from your lover's
Breath, mustard fumey
What lingers after
You consume each other
Is this memory of spices
Dancing salt waltzes
And mint fritillaries
Waving to parsley fronds
Which is why the milky
Delicacy of Bangla mishit
Mystical Varanasi rabri
Mysore pak melting piously
In your tolerant maws
Jalebi's intricate twists
Like signatures support
Only a lesser cause
Affection, but not love
If you're truly hungry
You must melt the world
Into paprika agonies
Tympanum of turmeric
Masking rosemary swirls
And cumin confetti
Falling in the basil dusk
As you wander through
Legendary cinnamon groves
Even the jumpy machinations
Of ginger must taste to you
Sweet, if you have feasted on love.
A woman is a thing apart.
She is bracketed off, a
Comma, semi-colon, at most
A lower-case letter, lost.
In the literate circus
She is just a striptease
Artist, but when she speaks
Her poems bite, ferocious.
Rhyme and shape, primitive
Beasts, come tamed to her
Endangered species, they
Recognise her desperation.
She wants, she badly wants
Not a fresh lover, strongman
Or clown, but a new language
In which to hold her own.
Whitman isn't in
He will not be in
This year or the next
He's gone out
Far out where the two
Americas meet like kissing whales
Beyond the net
Of the universities
Whitman celebrates his absence
Old grampus
Without a postmodern
Stitch on him he reads himself
Sitting naked
On leaves of grass
Sounding his barbaric yawp
Forever thirty-seven
And in perfect health chewing
The heads off dandelions and theorists
Which right-thinking critic
Would not like to put to sleep
This unconcerned ecologically hazardous
Phallogocentric brute
Once and for all in that
Endlessly rocking cradle of his?
But damn Whitman!
There's no putting him out
He says his sex contains all bodies, souls
This his self-description:
Stern, acrid, large, undissuadable
And help! Also draining the pent-up rivers
Of himself
Into women and demanding
Perfection from his love-spendings
Whitman alters
What he grandly calls
The base of all metaphysics
His gods
Are stones and sinews
Or an occult Brahma encountered
Interminably
Far back on that reckless
Passage to India descending radiating
His incantatory texts
And striding back and forth between
Vaunt'd Ionia and Sanskrit and the Vedas
Affected by a chronic logorrhoea
It's clear the fellow abhors silence, babbling
All the time of puzzles to be solv'd and blanks to be fill'd
Blissfully ignorant
That erasure is essential
Words treacherous and that doubt wafts in every human soul
Ah how I'd like
To introduce Walt to wordplay
Brackets and all the joys of paranomasia
How he'd love it too!
Whit(e)man caring not a whit
Careening down passion's witless slopes
Waltzing with Whitman
Could be such fun but he flatly
Refuses to rise to all my intellectual baits
He says he will not be
Darken'd and daz'd by books any more
He will steer for deep waters only and the farthest
Shore
And, sorry, poor dullards
Noodling in the groves of academe
Whitman will not
Be in this year or the next
It's the uncharted courses he's out to explore!
They have built a room next door
Where last week was only veranda
So when the watchman's cane at four a.m.
Smashes up my sleep, and morning rises
Ghostly, from the other end of the world
I try to imagine, as is only natural
The shuttered beginnings of life
Before the emergence into woman's sex
Filling up what used to be open space
Now an airless veranda, hung about
With purdahs, blocking off the light
Being blocked off from the light.
I, who have never known
Violence, see at nights
This - the moon-thugs
Finishing off a woman.
Mostly she is eyes
Minus the other marks
That make up a face. And
Her sari, winding red, tears
Audibly.
All my childhood, I slept
With a knife tucked under
Two pillows, for safety.
And that crescent still glistens
Maleficent.
Witheringly,
Glances uncover
What they shouldn't.
The five lyrics,
Thirty-five verses,
And one-three-five
Previous lines
Witness
A crime passionel!
Neatness strangling art
In my case,
Which is genitive,
And (as in Hindi)
Oblique.
Another tragic flaw
Is garrulousness.
Premodifiers (e.g.
Determiners) and
Convoluted post-
Positions take
(But naturally!)
The place of sex,
Revealing not just
The world's essential
Thinginess (on which
All words depend), but
Reflexively displaying -
Myself.
Where in the barefoot world you wander
Will go with you Gargi's untamed
Silence. Among the sea anemones'
Agile points of light, blue flamed
In mushroom woods, when wheelbarrows
Tip their load, and the mustard plains
Burn yellow in the recesses, listen
To the universe crackle, curl, change
Because Gargi has found the last, unnamed
Star, and on Yagnavalkya's ascetic skull
Her questions fall like soot, black rain
Stir in his groin, make him young again.
Zebra red spurts the tawn savannah grass
And lion swishes his tail, great maned
What is the warp and weft of the world
What lies in the taut weaver's frame?
Who turns the crankshaft in my brain?
Answer, Yagnavalkya! How many oceans deep
Is desire? When you touch me, am I sane?
Can a bee taste honey? Why does it sting?
In mean streets, in the slushy yards of pain
Gargi whispers in Yagnavalkya's ticklish ear
Your metaphysics is shaky! We're not chained
To Brahman. He is a prisoner of our senses.
That dry saltpetre hill, that baboon whooping
What's Brahman to them? Yet they'll remain
When we've packed up our arguments and gone
Tell me, Yagnavalkya, will you instruct me then?
Stop, Gargi! Stop! If you ask so much, for so much
Your head will fall off - or mine. I'm not ashamed
To admit my wisdom has limits. See that goat boy
Passing? The first lesson is one in restraint.
Don't mess with him, Gargi. In the soundless lanes
Of the sky, milk white Akasha, you will hear voices
Yours, his, mine, his and then - the last unclaimed
Akshara. Whose word is it, Gargi, Brahman's - or ours?
Then Gargi Vachanakari, smiling to herself, held her peace.
I wana be a pretty girl
one whos loved by guys everywhere
I wana be a strong girl
one whos not afraid to be hurt
I wana be a perfect girl
one that makes my mother proud
I wana be your girl
one your always around
but I guess I'll just be this girl
one who's barely noticed
I guess I'll be a random girl
one who's making faces
I guess I'll be a choir girl
one who's always got a song to sing
i guess i'll be this girl
one who is me
However, the poet in whom this pride in identity as a woman is fully realized and womanhood elebrated is Rukmini Bhaya Nair. In her book The Hyoid Bone she makes not the ‘ribcaged bird’ i.e., heart but a detached bone, the metaphor of awoman’s existence. The agenda of this new woman is:
Nor a fresh lover, strong man
Or clown, but a new language
In which to hold her own.”
With her motto “Tears are not our style, erudition says it better,” she sets out on her subversive journey. The myth of a male writer’s superiority stands shattered as she throws a challenge to Shankara, the eighth century Hindu philosopher and reformer:
We have wrung poems from our household tasks
Carrying water child sorrow can you do as much.43
Undaunted the poet goes on to subvert the myth of a male
God and the male as the super creation:
Every man has memories of being a woman
And women know they have been gods,
At one time or another
Ardhanarishwara4’
http://www.tamilvu.org/slet/lA100/lA100pd2.jsp?bookid=180&pno=44
Red juices stain her mouth.
Bored by her own powers
Immense and spectral, Kali broods
About Shiva, she is perverse.
She will not plead with him
Nor reveal Ganesha's birth
She will not ask him home.
Shiva loves her, but absences
And apsaras are natural to him
No god is hampered by his sins.
Kali desires a mortal, whose day
Begins with her, ends at nightfall
In her arms, a man who will die
Without her, whose love is fallible
But secure, she wants to be held
Like a warm creature, not a fable.
Loneliness drives this goddess mad
She is vagrant, her limbs askew
She begs a mate, her hair unmade.
Fickle as Shiva, memory deserts her
Chandi or Durga or Parvati, which
Is she, which of her selves weeps here?
Even Ganesha, for whom she feels
Only tenderness, excludes her, even he
Seems impatient with her flaws.
Where should such a goddess turn?
Kali, mistress of the temporal worlds
Wants bliss defined in human terms.
Staid Ganesha knows this wildness
Must be curbed, Shiva, peripatetic
Agrees, and across the wilderness
Both gift Kali a companion eagle, hurt
By no arrow, fed on nothing, it returns
Each night to its eyrie in her heart.
Love
my son, not quite seven, said
It was a bad day at school
Six children cried
Why? Were they sick? Did teacher scold?
Which six?
Trinanjan
Ishita - two times Ishita!
Arjun
Jatin
Actually, three times Ishita!
I can't tell you about it
Why not?
Neha started it
Rahul and I ran away
It was a madhouse!
A madhouse? Viraj, tell Amma, please.
You'll scold me. It was in the break
Teacher wasn't there
Okay, don't tell me! You don't have to tell me.
They were talking about
Love.
Love?
My not-quite-seven son looks sheepish, then mulish
Yeah, love.
But why did everyone cry? Love is nothing
To cry about! Love's a happy thing
Viraj, you know that
dear god, how we lie to our children
my son, named for procreation
amalgam of wild Aryan rituals
my son, the first Vedic man
stares at me
his glowing rhesus eyes
full of candour, of trust
my son says
Neha said Trinanjan loves Lori
And then Trinanjan started crying
Ishita loves Subir. Everybody says she loves Subir
Even Devika loves Subir
And Ishita cried
Actually, Trinanjan loves Lori, but Lori
Doesn't love Trinanjan
So Trinanjan cried
And you, Viraj, whom do you love?
You know.
No, I don't. Who?
Neha.
And Neha? Does anyone else love Neha?
She loves me.
That's lucky. How do you love Neha, Viraj?
Do you play with her? Is she your special friend?
No, I just love her.
Viraj, why didn't you cry?
I was brave
yes you were brave, Viraj
you don't know just how brave
you'll have to be
it's a lonely business - this love
you were the first man, you ought to know
and then I think how primitive
this thing is, how old
what fires have burned for it
what fantailed dances it inspires
schooldays
neatly segmented into periods, subjects
Hindi, Maths, English
and something mysterious called E.V.S.
but all that method, that learning
those iterated aisles of desks
rows of little chairs
then come to this -
a break at high noon
at recess
Love breaks into that gap in the day
it holds its own classes
Erich Segal, sentimentaliser of a generation
you knew love was about crying, Ryan O'Neal
had to love Ali McGraw, if it was really
Love
you knew about the accusations, the guilt
but you had no inkling that all the schmaltz
the romance, begins with this instinct
for pairing
with recitations, incantations
encirclements
spells
Ne ha began it. It was a madhouse.
Trinanjan and Lori, Viraj and Neha, Ishita
and Subir, Subir and Devika, have they all
entered the madhouse?
Love
is not never having to says things
it is to say things, show things
over and over and over again
with all the desperate jazz at your disposal
see, that's Romeo on his bum guitar
and that's the moon, shameless mauve
riding the tide - and Neha
you can make out Neha
stirring her amateur brew
O Viraj, step back, step back
from the red-bottomed langur turn-ups
from the aggrieved jackal cries
from the kingfisher's Dionysiac blue
you are too young for a tragic hero
too young to die of natural causes
O Viraj - you are just too young for words!
words, even words
can tear you apart -
if those are all you have
but today my son Viraj, not quite seven
is indifferent to danger
he is brave
merged with the brilliant sky, the earth's
dark quilted bracken
he has become his first self -
three thousand, twelve thousand
a billion years old . . .
Advice
Let the wind blow through
Let the light in, you say
But this I cannot do.
My poems are heavy, dark shawls
Huddled in them, every season,
I'm obscure as a sibyl.
The hailstone syllables
Clatter
And melt.
Feasts (a song for spice girls everywhere)
When at nights you feel
On another's tongue
Slanderous asafoetida
Lime's quick murderous knife
Sliding in among
Wild strawberry orgies
Arabesques of garlic
Curvaceous around
The sentinel cloves
You wonder about desire
How it can be found
Delicate as rose water
Or frank as coriander
Rising from your lover's
Breath, mustard fumey
What lingers after
You consume each other
Is this memory of spices
Dancing salt waltzes
And mint fritillaries
Waving to parsley fronds
Which is why the milky
Delicacy of Bangla mishit
Mystical Varanasi rabri
Mysore pak melting piously
In your tolerant maws
Jalebi's intricate twists
Like signatures support
Only a lesser cause
Affection, but not love
If you're truly hungry
You must melt the world
Into paprika agonies
Tympanum of turmeric
Masking rosemary swirls
And cumin confetti
Falling in the basil dusk
As you wander through
Legendary cinnamon groves
Even the jumpy machinations
Of ginger must taste to you
Sweet, if you have feasted on love.
Margins, ma(i)nstream
A woman is a thing apart.
She is bracketed off, a
Comma, semi-colon, at most
A lower-case letter, lost.
In the literate circus
She is just a striptease
Artist, but when she speaks
Her poems bite, ferocious.
Rhyme and shape, primitive
Beasts, come tamed to her
Endangered species, they
Recognise her desperation.
She wants, she badly wants
Not a fresh lover, strongman
Or clown, but a new language
In which to hold her own.
A politically incorrect ode to whitman
Whitman isn't in
He will not be in
This year or the next
He's gone out
Far out where the two
Americas meet like kissing whales
Beyond the net
Of the universities
Whitman celebrates his absence
Old grampus
Without a postmodern
Stitch on him he reads himself
Sitting naked
On leaves of grass
Sounding his barbaric yawp
Forever thirty-seven
And in perfect health chewing
The heads off dandelions and theorists
Which right-thinking critic
Would not like to put to sleep
This unconcerned ecologically hazardous
Phallogocentric brute
Once and for all in that
Endlessly rocking cradle of his?
But damn Whitman!
There's no putting him out
He says his sex contains all bodies, souls
This his self-description:
Stern, acrid, large, undissuadable
And help! Also draining the pent-up rivers
Of himself
Into women and demanding
Perfection from his love-spendings
Whitman alters
What he grandly calls
The base of all metaphysics
His gods
Are stones and sinews
Or an occult Brahma encountered
Interminably
Far back on that reckless
Passage to India descending radiating
His incantatory texts
And striding back and forth between
Vaunt'd Ionia and Sanskrit and the Vedas
Affected by a chronic logorrhoea
It's clear the fellow abhors silence, babbling
All the time of puzzles to be solv'd and blanks to be fill'd
Blissfully ignorant
That erasure is essential
Words treacherous and that doubt wafts in every human soul
Ah how I'd like
To introduce Walt to wordplay
Brackets and all the joys of paranomasia
How he'd love it too!
Whit(e)man caring not a whit
Careening down passion's witless slopes
Waltzing with Whitman
Could be such fun but he flatly
Refuses to rise to all my intellectual baits
He says he will not be
Darken'd and daz'd by books any more
He will steer for deep waters only and the farthest
Shore
And, sorry, poor dullards
Noodling in the groves of academe
Whitman will not
Be in this year or the next
It's the uncharted courses he's out to explore!
Blocking Off the Light
They have built a room next door
Where last week was only veranda
So when the watchman's cane at four a.m.
Smashes up my sleep, and morning rises
Ghostly, from the other end of the world
I try to imagine, as is only natural
The shuttered beginnings of life
Before the emergence into woman's sex
Filling up what used to be open space
Now an airless veranda, hung about
With purdahs, blocking off the light
Being blocked off from the light.
Reprisal
I, who have never known
Violence, see at nights
This - the moon-thugs
Finishing off a woman.
Mostly she is eyes
Minus the other marks
That make up a face. And
Her sari, winding red, tears
Audibly.
All my childhood, I slept
With a knife tucked under
Two pillows, for safety.
And that crescent still glistens
Maleficent.
Sentence
Witheringly,
Glances uncover
What they shouldn't.
The five lyrics,
Thirty-five verses,
And one-three-five
Previous lines
Witness
A crime passionel!
Neatness strangling art
In my case,
Which is genitive,
And (as in Hindi)
Oblique.
Another tragic flaw
Is garrulousness.
Premodifiers (e.g.
Determiners) and
Convoluted post-
Positions take
(But naturally!)
The place of sex,
Revealing not just
The world's essential
Thinginess (on which
All words depend), but
Reflexively displaying -
Myself.
Gargi's Silence
Where in the barefoot world you wander
Will go with you Gargi's untamed
Silence. Among the sea anemones'
Agile points of light, blue flamed
In mushroom woods, when wheelbarrows
Tip their load, and the mustard plains
Burn yellow in the recesses, listen
To the universe crackle, curl, change
Because Gargi has found the last, unnamed
Star, and on Yagnavalkya's ascetic skull
Her questions fall like soot, black rain
Stir in his groin, make him young again.
Zebra red spurts the tawn savannah grass
And lion swishes his tail, great maned
What is the warp and weft of the world
What lies in the taut weaver's frame?
Who turns the crankshaft in my brain?
Answer, Yagnavalkya! How many oceans deep
Is desire? When you touch me, am I sane?
Can a bee taste honey? Why does it sting?
In mean streets, in the slushy yards of pain
Gargi whispers in Yagnavalkya's ticklish ear
Your metaphysics is shaky! We're not chained
To Brahman. He is a prisoner of our senses.
That dry saltpetre hill, that baboon whooping
What's Brahman to them? Yet they'll remain
When we've packed up our arguments and gone
Tell me, Yagnavalkya, will you instruct me then?
Stop, Gargi! Stop! If you ask so much, for so much
Your head will fall off - or mine. I'm not ashamed
To admit my wisdom has limits. See that goat boy
Passing? The first lesson is one in restraint.
Don't mess with him, Gargi. In the soundless lanes
Of the sky, milk white Akasha, you will hear voices
Yours, his, mine, his and then - the last unclaimed
Akshara. Whose word is it, Gargi, Brahman's - or ours?
Then Gargi Vachanakari, smiling to herself, held her peace.
I'll be me -
Jasmine Thompson
I wana be a pretty girl
one whos loved by guys everywhere
I wana be a strong girl
one whos not afraid to be hurt
I wana be a perfect girl
one that makes my mother proud
I wana be your girl
one your always around
but I guess I'll just be this girl
one who's barely noticed
I guess I'll be a random girl
one who's making faces
I guess I'll be a choir girl
one who's always got a song to sing
i guess i'll be this girl
one who is me
However, the poet in whom this pride in identity as a woman is fully realized and womanhood elebrated is Rukmini Bhaya Nair. In her book The Hyoid Bone she makes not the ‘ribcaged bird’ i.e., heart but a detached bone, the metaphor of awoman’s existence. The agenda of this new woman is:
Nor a fresh lover, strong man
Or clown, but a new language
In which to hold her own.”
With her motto “Tears are not our style, erudition says it better,” she sets out on her subversive journey. The myth of a male writer’s superiority stands shattered as she throws a challenge to Shankara, the eighth century Hindu philosopher and reformer:
We have wrung poems from our household tasks
Carrying water child sorrow can you do as much.43
Undaunted the poet goes on to subvert the myth of a male
God and the male as the super creation:
Every man has memories of being a woman
And women know they have been gods,
At one time or another
Ardhanarishwara4’
http://www.tamilvu.org/slet/lA100/lA100pd2.jsp?bookid=180&pno=44
கு.ப.ரா. கவிதைகள்
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| புதுக்கவிதை வரலாற்றில் கு.ப.ராஜகோபாலனின் கவிதைகளுக்குத் தனியான-முக்கியமான-ஒரு இடம் உண்டு. அவர் வசன கவிதைகள் தான் எழுதினார். அதிகமாகவும் எழுதி விடவில்லை. ‘மணிக்கொடி’ நாட்களில் 24 கவிதைகள், ‘கலாமோகினி’யில் 5 கவிதைகள். இவ்வளவே-நான் அறிந்தவரை-அச்சில் வந்தவை. ‘நமக்குத் தொழில் கவிதை, நாட்டிற்கு உழைத்தல்; இமைப்பொழுதும் சோராதிருத்தல்’ என்று கொள்கை அறிவிப்பு செய்து கொண்டு, மறுமலர்ச்சி இலக்கிய மாதம் இருமுறையாகப்புது வடிவம் பெற்ற ‘கிராம ஊழியன்’ பத்திரிகையில், 1943 ஆகஸ்ட் 15 முதல் டிசம்பர் 1முடிய, கௌரவ ஆசிரியர் என்றும், டிசம்பர் 15 முதல் 1944 ஏப்ரல் இறுதிவரை ஆசிரியர்ஆகவும், கு.ப.ரா பணிபுரிந்திருக்கிறார். கவிஞர் திருலோக சீதாராம் அதன் ஆசிரியராகவும், நிர்வாக ஆசிரியராகவும் செயலாற்றினார். இந்த ஒன்பது மாதங்களில் கு.ப.ரா ‘கிராம ஊழிய’னில் கதை, கட்டுரை, வரலாறு என்று பல படைப்புகள் எழுதியிருப்பினும், ஒரு கவிதைகூட எழுதவில்லை. இது குறிப்பிடப்பட வேண்டிய ஒரு (அதிசயச்) செய்தியாகவே எனக்குப் படுகிறது. ந. பிச்சமூர்த்தி கூட இரண்டே இரண்டு கவிதைகள்தான் எழுதியிருக்கிறார். கதைகள், ‘மனநிழல்’ கட்டுரைகள் பல எழுதியுள்ளார். அவ்விரு கவிதைகளில் மிக அருமையானது. | |
ஏனோ?
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சந்த்ரன் நல்லாக் காயுரண்டா சின்ன ராயப்பா-அந்த மந்த்ரத்துலே மயங்கி நிக்கிது மட்டை குட்டை எல்லாம், பாம்பெறிந்த சட்டைபோல சின்ன ராயப்பா-இந்த ஆம்பல் வர்ணரோட்டு ரொம்ப அழகு பொங்குது, வெளிச்சத்தாலே ஆகாசத்தை சின்ன ராயப்பா-யாரோ பளிங்கைப்போல் பண்ணிவிட்டா சின்ன ராயப்பா. அழகும் சொகமும் சொக்குதடா சின்ன ராயப்பா-எங்கும் மழலை பேசும் காத்தெக்கேளு சின்ன ராயப்பா. | |
| நிலவும் நீயும் எனக்கிருந்தும் சின்ன ராயப்பா-நல்ல நெல்லும் நெழலும் நெறஞ்சிருந்தும் சின்ன ராயப்பா அந்த பனங்கொளத்து வீட்டுக்காரி நடை குலுக்கிலே-தொலை உலவிச் செல்லுதாவியேனோ சின்ன ராயப்பா. | |
| கு.ப.ரா. தனது கவிதைகளை ‘கருவளையும் கையும்’ என்ற தலைப்பில் தொகுத்துப் புத்தகமாக வெளியிட வேண்டும் என்று பெரிதும் முயற்சி செய்தார். ஆனால் அவருடைய ஆசை அவர் காலத்திலும் சரி, அதன் பின்னரும் சரியே; நிறைவேற வழி ஏற்படவில்லை. அந்தத் தொகுப்பு வெளிவந்திருந்தால் அது தமிழ்க்கவிதை உலகில் குறிப்பிடத் தகுந்த ஒரு அருமையானப் படைப்பு நூலாகத் திகழ்ந்திருக்கும். ‘கருவளை யொலியில் கொள்ளை கொண்டென்னை
ஆழ்த்தின காதலில், கருத்திழந்துருகினேன்;
பருவமப்போது பெண் எழிற் குவியலில்
சூழ்ந்திருந்த சோர்வில் சுவை கண்ட கோலம்
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| ’ | |
| அந்தச் சுவையில் அவர் ‘உள்ளப் பூவை உதிர்த்தெடுத்து, மாலை தொடுத்தவுடனே மங்கை கை கொடுத்த’ அன்பு அஞ்சலிகளே கு.ப.ரா. வின் பெரும்பாலான கவிதைகள். கருவளையும் கையும், தலைவியின் தேர்தல், கவிதைப் பெண்ணுக்கு, பெண்ணின் பிறவி ரகசியம், ஏன்? சதையை மீறியது, எப்பொழுது புத்துயிர், நிச்சயம், இடைவேளை உருவம், நீயும் நானும், சோர்வும் குழைவும், என்னதான் பின்?, விடுதலை, விரதம், உரம், உயிர், தரிசனம், மாங்கனிச் சுவைப்பு ஆகியவை மென்மையான உணர்வுகளை இனிமை எழிலாய், கற்பனை நயத்தோடும் கவிதை வளத்தோடும் சித்திரிப்பனவாகும். இவற்றிலே பல கவிதைகள் பின்னர் ‘எழுத்து’ இதழ்களில் மறுபிரசுரம் செய்யப்பட்டன. அவற்றில் அநேகம் ‘வாசகர் வட்டம்’ பிரசுரமான ‘சிறிது வெளிச்சம்’ என்பதில் இடம் பெற்றுள்ளன என்று நினைக்கிறேன். பெண்மையை வியந்து போற்றும் இவ் அகத்துறைக் கவிதைகள் தவிர, வேறு பொருள்களைப் பாடும் சில கவிதைகளையும் கு.ப.ரா. எழுதியிருக்கிறார். ‘வாழ்க்கை’ பற்றிய அவரது சிந்தனை சேஷமானது- வாழ்க்கை ஒரு வெற்றி. ஒரு துடிப்பு
ஓரு காதற்பா, ஒரு இசை,
மண்ணின் மாயமோனையில் பிறந்தது.
அரைத் தூக்கத்திலும் அதிசயத்திலும் அது உதிக்கிறது
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| விடியற்காலை விடுதலையில் வளர்கிறது- செயல் செய்யும் தேவையில், கண் கண்டதற்கு மேல் ஓடுகிறது கனவு, பாதையெல்லாம் பூரிக்கிறது பேரவா- யௌவனம் மாறுகிறவரை பிறகு வருகிறது யோசனை, கரும வெற்றிகளில் பிறந்த களிப்பு, உற்பத்தி செய்வதிலிருக்கும் உள்ள நெகிழ்ச்சி, அரை குறையற்றதின் அழகு, நிறைவின் நிம்மதி, மண்ணின் மற்றெல்லா மகிழ்ச்சிகள்- மாலை வரை! இருண்டதும், மனிதன் மறுபடியும் பிரயாணமாகிறான் தன் வழியே- அமைதியாக. | |||||||||
| வாழ்வின் இனிமைகளை ரசித்து மகிழ வேண்டும் என்று கருதி இன்பங்களை வியந்து போற்றுவதில் கு.ப.ரா. ஆர்வம் கொண்டிருந்தார் என்பதை அவர் எழுத்துக்கள் கூறும். அவரது வாழ்க்கைத் தத்துவத்தைப் பிரகடனப்படுத்துவது போல் அமைந்துள்ளது ‘நண்பனுக்கு’ என்ற கவிதை. ஓயாமல் எண்ணியும் பேசியும்,
சளைத்துப்போய் விட்டோம், அல்லவா?
வார்த்தையை வைத்து வாதாடி
வீண் வித்தியாசம் கொண்டோம். போதும்!
மாயையும் தத்துவமும் என்ன
என்று தெரியவே வேண்டாம்;
கண்கண்ட சுகத்தைக் கடைந்து
உண்போம், இனிமேல், வா!
இவ் வாழ்க்கை நதி வரண்டு
மணலாகும் மரணம் வரை
அதன் கரைபுரளும் வெற்றியை
ஒப்புக்கொள்வோம், அதனாலென்ன?
உயிரின் இன்ப ஊழியத்தில்
அடிமைகளாவோம். பாதகமில்லை!
ஆத்மா, பரமாத்மா-இந்தப் பேச்சு-
யுகம் யுகமாக, காது துளைத்துப் போச்சு!
அது வேண்டாம் நமக்கு!
மதுக்கிண்ணத்தைப் பற்றிப் பேசினானே
அவன் யார்?-உமர்கயாம் -
அவனைத் தொடர்வோம். அப்பா!
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