The Atlas of Lost Beliefs

Ranjit Hoskote

• Publisher: Arc Publications
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781911469643
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Asian Poetry
• Index: Literature

Commenting on Hoskote's poetry on the Poetry International website, the poet and editor Arundhathi Subramaniam observes: "His writing has revealed a consistent and exceptional brilliance in its treatment of image. Hoskote's metaphors are finely wrought, luminous and sensuous, combining an artisanal virtuosity with passion, turning each poem into a many-angled, multifaced experience."

I

MEMOIRS OF
THE JONAHWHALE

THE CHURCHGATE GAZETTE

I

Last word on the subject, I promise.

I walked into the train station and it was terrifying.

Like nerve gas had laid the architecture out flat,

the tall glass columns bloodshot and the booking clerks

slumped over, all dead at the till.

A plaster Gandhi with sulphur-rimmed eyes

stopped me (what a substitute for kohl and why?).

You missed the last train, it said, he said,

you missed the last and only train that was safe

for a man who’s left half his life behind.

II

A straggler from a late-night movie had more advice.

You could so easily gag on a wine-red, tasselled silk scarf

stuffed in your mouth, he said, you could so easily gag

on sour saliva or a shard of bay leaf,

or a letter swallowed just after the bell has rung

and before the door opens.

III

I thought of the possibilities as I left the station without a compass.

Walk straight enough, said Gandhi, and you could walk into the sea.

At the wharf, the sailors’ wives were keening together:

they were singing the last songs of the whales.

I was their brother and I had killed them

with my broken harpoon and my rusted smile.

IV

Find affection, I told myself. That’s fundamental.

Find a voice that doesn’t draw blood

each time you hear it. I walked past myself,

I rippled across lean men and sleek women

laughing behind plate glass, their hands caught

in pools of light, wine gleaming in brittle flutes.

V

Birdsong disturbs the king of incomplete lives.

He wakes up in the middle of the novel he’s writing

in the Midnight Hotel. His eyes need shielding

from the raw clarity of neon. He is back

where he began, with a plate of waxy grapes

and a blunt silver knife on his bedside table.

VI

Break, ice, for me.

Let me fall through stinging water

in my skin of rust and flame.

I’ve jumped from a tree

that’s branched into the clouds.

It’s sucked up all the reality

I’ve watered it with.

Its fruits are red and wrinkled.

I plunge into drowned gardens

where I walked once.

Sinking, the water stroking

my crown of leaves

as it comes apart,

dark tribune, archaic clown,

I open my eyes.

THE MAP SELLER

for Nikola Madzirov

The roof’s dripping with pigeons and I’ve just escaped

the worst of the sun, strapped on my scuffed leather bag,

and in a moment – this shade’s delicious – and before

the pedlars start shouting, Say your piece! Say your piece!

I’ll start calling out names and pulling countries from it:

big countries, small countries, countries broken in two,

countries the size of handkerchiefs and countries engorged

with other countries, buffer zones jostled by failed states,

island republics sinking by degrees. Even nuclear powers

that started as papaya plots or guano archipelagos.

Whatever you like, I’ve got a map that looks like it –

and you can have any piece of my flaking jigsaw atlas,

if only I could reach you across this accordion sky

that’s billowed open to rain on all the hats I wear:

tribune of nowhere, midnight’s newscaster,

out-of-work weatherman, all-terrain refugee.

And across this trench that a JCB’s dug along my street:

tomorrow’s avenue, today’s wide sludge grave.

THE ATLAS OF LOST BELIEFS

Without waking up, turn to page thirty-seven

in the Atlas of Lost Beliefs

and surround yourself

with apsaras, kinnaras, gandharvas, maenads,

satyrs, sorcerers, bonobos, organ grinders,

stargazers, gunsmiths, long-distance runners,

gravediggers, calligraphers, solitary reapers,

beenkars, troubadours, rababias, ronin,

nagas, pearl divers, Vandals, Goths,

mummers, snipers, collectors of moths,

hobos, dharma bums, bauls, ...