“everything left to lose is already lost” — Three Poems by Omair Bhat

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[dropcap]K[/dropcap]ashmir has never known modernity without a first acquaintance with the machinery of war within a ruptured history that birthed nation states along with their own set of challenges and ambitions. In a non-confrontational pose to such an alien modernity, immersed deep within a world cradling itself, there once stood Kashmiri fields, quiet landscapes, water bodies, mountains, seasons and changes in weather, and rural spaces. An experience of—and a bond with—such a natural world was disrupted by modern warfare and kept from being passed on from one generation to the next. A poetics of being Kashmiri was altered and hijacked through subterfuge, with a tempting promise of becoming (modern) that ultimately rendered an “un-becoming” of that which could otherwise have been.

In an intellectual space where phrases like “indigeneity”, “collective memory” and “erasure” resound within contemporary conversations, Omair Bhat presents three poems about the current times, the disturbed past and the impending future. His verses give voice to that world once cradled within itself and within the womb of Kashmiri nature, before the Kashmiri subject was snatched from it and set on a ‘transformative’ path leading to a crossroads where no one can even recognize themselves anymore—as person, individual, collective or as community.

Aspirations, pretenses, and falsehoods crafted from the vanquished truth now dictate the course of history in a world where supposed leaders render tribute to that ‘alien modern’ and write books rendering tribute to its many seductions. Meanwhile, a prison where “wazwaan is delivered by drone” and shikaras are booked on ‘the cloud’ still remains a prison. With such things taken into consideration, these three poems by Omair Bhat are a testament to the arbitrary notion that the weight of a collective history can indeed rest upon the pen of a single person with the power to step out of time to retrieve lost spaces—through a solitary dialogue with a forgotten poetics of being (Kashmiri).

In this mode, Omair’s verses betray their claim to hopelessness for as long as there are poets dislocated from within to displace readers of poetry from their mundane habituation—to interpret the imagery, time, and experience of a world where we once belonged, and that once belonged to us. Homer had this power, to use his blindness to see what others around him could not. Bob Dylan also had this power, to bring rural America to the American cityscape at a time when American modernity was industriously doing the contrary. In both cases, and in this third one, poetry stood on the roadside, by a field or next to a camp, to watch movements and shifts rendered invisible even while in plain sight.

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It is like a windy night of lightning in dry winter
broken loose on the staid firmness of old poplars.
A priori excitement for the arrival of snow has wilted,
the fields long after the harvest have borne cracks,
the earth is split into a thousand riddling halves.
One does not expect rain tonight or tomorrow,
one does not expect to hear the rumble of clouds.
The quiet grows on you like death's reclaim on life.
And in the quick bursts of light flashing an eternity before your eyes,
you see both what existed and exists in time and outside it.
The stunned wonder of beyond approaches you
here at the altar of final truth.
The clay heaven wanes into luminosity of an end and another beginning,
in that clear light sacred purple in winter
that will never arrive.

(Remembering Something
or Trying Not To)

A trampled nocturnal reminiscence
of what might have resembled that sound

that soft impeccable sound
of an endless night of rain

was stranded between loose ends of war

between the staccato growl of the gunfire
and the hurried feet slipping
into hulled commotion,

and these noises, unassailable,
mute against the fury of Kalashnikovs

playing all over again
in the back of my head

broken songs transmitted through
a perpetual motion machine

were all swallowed by the sky's
vast barrenness

that sound though: it fell through
into terra incognita of the absence

of any thought through a hole
in the void no prayer could sew

I was there and nowhere
I was here and I was not

chased by the Sisyphean
impossibility of a survival

I gave up, at some point,
to settle for the unfamiliarity

with any sound or a shriek
I ever remembered or did not.

Thousand Years from Today

It won't be the same evening
no one will care about dying

no one will look up and marvel
at the moon's remoteness to earth

time will assign a smoldering downpour
to gatekeep the footfall of living

into the sustained illusion
of Eden's inner chamber of mirth

where, by parched rill, the clock tower
will grow tufts of ivy and grass

on the ears of an ancient horse
galloping on the ebb of an hourglass.

The rivers will have drained
into an insignificant trickle

of a thin yellow line in the midst
of a muted town shimmering in the sun.

A skeleton of a rugged boat in the mud
inundated by the bees will sniggle

at the vows and clamorings of past
men echoed to the mountains.

The lake will chase fish away
into the tangled skein of yarn.

The edible stem in the dwindling waters
will germinate outrage on the tongue's silence.

And finally — finally someone will say
now there's nothing to lose

in a matter-of-fact way: declaring
counter offensives on time's transience

but we'll all know that in fact
everything left to lose is already lost.