The Wise Owl Preview
Signing in the Air by Malashri Lal
Malashri Lal’s forthcoming book of poems, Signing in the Air is about imprint and erasures. The seventy-six poems represent a seance with words, in the darkness of the mystical unknown with a glow of candlelight that flickers with an awareness of continuities. Here the tangible and the intangible meet. A preview-- two poems where nature speaks.
Poems from Signing in the Air by Malashri Lal
The Dancing Maina
By Malashri Lal
Like a Kathak dancer
the Maina bird
stood firmly on her poised webbed feet.
The beak pecked the red earth
in a supplicant’s prayer,
then she moved only her head and neck
in rhythm
unison
casting yellow rimmed eyes leftward
rightwards
neck steady
feet unmoving
Epitome of Sundari Greeva in Kathak
she bends her neck, left-right-left, with ease.
Nature’s untaught pupil
her stage is the cushioned grass
her audience--the eagles circling in the sky.
Ranthambhore
By Malashri Lal
This tiger’s eyes are flecked green
with memories of jungles cut down
Blue specs in his eyes store the lost sky
under which his ancestors roamed the ravines.
Ranthambhore Fort was built in the fifth century.
Mighty encampments to resist siege,
it was yet conquered repeatedly as a coveted victory
by Rajputs and Moghuls too.
But none disturbed the forest creatures
like the noisy tourists and the canters today.
They kill with cameras, dust and destination events.
The tiger, sambhar, legions of birds and the day-shy owl
hide behind the bushes
praying for the summer when the
Sanctuary will be closed
and only temple bells will ring
for Trinetra Ganesh.
Malashri Lal, writer and academic, with twenty-four books, retired as Professor, English Department, University of Delhi. Publications include Tagore and the Feminine, and The Law of the Threshold: Women Writers in Indian English. Co-edited with Namita Gokhale is the ‘goddess trilogy’, and also Betrayed by Hope: A Play on the Life of Michael Madhusudan Dutt which received the Kalinga Fiction Award. Lal’s poems Mandalas of Time received global acclaim. Honours include the prestigious ‘Maharani Gayatri Devi Award for Women’s Excellence’