Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume One November-December 2024
The Voice (Return), poems by Indran Amirthanayagam.
The Voice (Return)
This return will take place
without further delay
or dilly dallying. It
will happen in full
and half light and
quarter darkness.
It will be full, half
and quarter court-
pressed. There is no
other way out. You
will return now
or later or eventually
or before you get
interrupted by
the whirling knife
or lacerating tongue,
the insecure need to seize
and slice the neck
and press down until
the chords pop.
Outside
I have the impression that the poet in the Spanish-speaking world
still works in business, in public administration, in entertainment
and not only as a bookseller, librarian or teacher of literary creation.
This reassures me a lot. I can go to Mexico or Costa Rica, or Chile
to meet poets on the streets, in bars, in offices. Sadly the American
situation is different. Here poets teach in master’s programs
in fine arts or in departments of literary creation. And they help
one another with mutual invitations to their classrooms inside
ivory towers. But those city poets, who live outside of
the university, do not reach the student’s ear. They are voices
in the darkness and in the wastelands. They are also excluded
from prizes judged by the professors.
From the Periphery
The center did not hold. Wings
buckled and from the dust bowl
of beams broken into concrete
strips and slivers a horrible
terror is waking up after
more than twenty centuries
and tens of eons asleep…
You see and hear nods
to Yeats. Now, let me go
with young Tom down
the sawdust-strewn street.
And to C.P in those days
of 19…take his hand
and scurry into the alley
and through the backdoor
of the coffee shop. I have
an appointment to keep:
with my daughter and son,
woman and god: my reader
as well, if you can bear
the beams of autobiography
to traipse ‘round the tent
like a lamb in love–forever
in your debt, Mr. William Blake.
© Indran Amirthanayagam
Indran Amirthanayagam is a poet, editor, publisher, translator, youtube host and diplomat. For thirty years he worked for his adoptive country, the United States, on diplomatic assignments in Africa, Asia, Europe and North and South America. Amirthanayagam produced a unique record in 2020 publishing three poetry collections written in three different languages. He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Haitian Creole. He has published twenty five poetry books In music, he recorded Rankont Dout. He edits the Beltway Poetry Quarterly (www.beltwaypoetry.com); writes https://indranamirthanayagam.blogspot.com; writes a weekly poem for Haiti en Marche and El Acento; has received fellowships from the Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, The US/Mexico Fund for Culture and the Macdowell Colony. He is the IFLAC Word Poeta Mundial 2022. Amirthanayagam hosts The Poetry Channel https://youtube.com/user/indranam. New books include Seer, The Runner’s Almanac, and Powèt nan po la (Poet of the Port ) Indran publishes poetry books at Beltway Editions (www.beltwayeditions.com). Amirthanayagam’s first collection in Portuguese Música subterranea just appeared from Editora Kotter in Brazil.