Brunizem

Sujata Bhatt

• Publisher: Carcanet Poetry
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781857549812
• eBook ISBN: 9781847779793
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

A NEW 2008 EDITION OF SUJATA BHATT'S CELEBRATED 1988 FIRST COLLECTION 'Brunizem' is a dark prairie soil found in Asia, Europe and North America, the three worlds of Sujata Bhatt's imagination. Born in India, her mother tongue Gujarati, Bhatt was educated in the United States and now lives in Germany. In Brunizem, her acclaimed first collection, she explores the richness and the conflicts of moving between cultures and languages, in poems that are passionate, direct and eloquent. Brunizem was awarded the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asia) and the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award. In 1994 Search for My Tongue was choreographed by Daksha Sheth and performed by the UK-based South Asian Dance Youth Company in nine cities in England and Scotland, under the title Tongues Untied.

II

A Different History

A Different History

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.

* Sarasvati: the goddess of knowledge. She presides over all the Fine Arts and is worshipped in libraries.

She Finds Her Place

Oh but he wanted a wife,

Shileyko did –

a wife, not a poet,

so he burnt Anna’s poems

in the samovar.

And I yelled at you

when all you did

was spill some tea

(quite accidentally) over my poems.

Now outside in the snow

I’m looking for the tallest pine tree,

the one whose sly wisdom I need.

Now outside in the snow

I’m thinking of Anna. Over there

it’s always dark. The sky

if not grey, is black.

The snow thigh high

slowly grows waist deep.

But the tall woman, her dark shawl

pulled taut, walks on anyway.

The tall woman walks alone,

deeper into the woods

among a crowd of trees

she finds her place

and looks at the moon

as if it were her little sister

finally come home.

The Kama Sutra Retold

Then Roman Svirsky said,

“it is illegal in Russia to write

about sex

so it is important

for Vasily Aksyonov

to write about it –”

You laugh,

but I want to know

how would we break the long silence

if we had the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• I: The First Disciple
• II: A Different History
• III: Eurydice Speaks
• About the Author
• Also by Sujata Bhatt from Carcanet Press
• Copyright