Shanta Acharya DPhil (Oxon) was born and educated in Cuttack, Odisha. She won a scholarship to Oxford, where she was among the first batch of women admitted to Worcester College. After completing her doctoral degree, she was appointed a Visiting Scholar in the Department of English and American Literature and Languages at Harvard University. Since 1985, she has lived and worked in London. The author of twelve books, her most recent publications are What Survives Is The Singing (Indigo Dreams Publishing, UK; 2020) and Imagine: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins, India; 2017). Her poems, articles, and reviews have appeared in major international publications. As director and founder of ‘Poetry in the House’, she hosted monthly poetry readings at Lauderdale House, London, from 1996-2015. She served twice on the board of trustees of the Poetry Society in the UK. www.shantaacharya.com
For An interview with Shanta Acharya click HERE
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Belshazzar’s Feast
(After the painting by Rembrandt in the National Gallery, London)
In the Dutch room amid Rembrandt’s paintings,
I sit sharing my reflections with myself –
my woollen jacket no comparison with Belshazzar’s
mantle of ermine studded with jewels,
his silk turban, white and resplendent,
crowning his distracted gaze.
The room acquires the aura of a court in session,
members of the jury appear unmoved,
floating like creatures treading on the moon.
The wooden bench, the murmuring crowd,
the parched sensation in my throat,
deeper rumblings in my stomach,
tired eyes and cold feet, a bone-marrow fatigue
alienates me from the artistic feat.
The haloed hand, the writing on the wall,
offer unexpected food for thought.
Mene Mene Tekal Upharsin: You have been
weighed in the balance and found wanting.
Belshazzar’s face aghast with such revelation!
Do not despair, one was saved; do not presume, one was damned.
I close my eyes thinking of God mercifully
adjusting the divine scales in my favour –
myself poised on one side, insubstantial;
my burden of sins on the other, weighing down
heavy, leaving me quite unbalanced.
So god kept adding extra weights of suffering
to help me overcome my unbearable lightness of being
like an ingenious doctor shrewdly intent
on restoring me to life by increasing daily
the bitter pills of my life in self-exile.
I had a vision of grace reconciling me
to myself, to see me poised and not wanting.
You may have mistaken my strength, dear God
to emerge from your gift of suffering balanced.
Imagine: New and Selected Poems, from Not This, Not That (1994)
Loose Talk
You can hold your peace all on your own
if you can learn to hold your tongue.
And, if anything is not to your liking, it is best
to take the name of the Lord, Hari Om,
for that is not in vain – with some such words
my tongue-tied grandmother gifted away
the treasures of her wisdom to her daughter.
My mother, sharing her legacy, taught me yoga –
how to bend my body like a bow, raise it like a snake,
roar like a lion, stretch my tongue as far as my nose.
I encouraged my mother to loosen her tongue,
it was her story I yearned to hear
in her words, unfurling like the national flag
on Independence Day to the anthem we sang together.
My mother tongue is Oriya –
mysterious as Chilika, lyrical as Konarka.
I grew up in English, inhabiting words
from a distant island that took me home.
How can I keep my worlds apart,
cast away my runaway tongue?
Critics like ruthless children pelted my forked-
tongue which had not learnt to rattle.
In a world devoid of plain speak I sought
remedy from my goddesses, companions
to the muses: Hiss, child hiss!
They whispered their secret syllables,
and I graduated from an obedient stutter
to shedding my shame, singing my song.
With tongues of fire I speak –
for grandmothers and mothers in silent revolt,
for daughters and sisters striving to be heard –
lending my voice, sharing our story.
Drunk with the variousness of the world,
I am mistress of my tongue,
kavita flows from my fingertips –
soaring high as a hawk, gentle as tortoise,
knowing nothing, everything – laughing buddhas,
auroras dancing to the music of the universe,
my verse bitter neem, divine nectar,
deep as thought, brief as a moment,
an epic Himalayan avalanche,
submarine volcanoes lighting a ring of fire.
Crooked as truth, I create pearls of wisdom
with years of polishing, coming full circle
to my grandmother’s home-truths –
balancing a world of words in my mouth.
Imagine: New and Selected Poems, from Numbering Our Days’ Illusions (1995)
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Looking In, Looking Out
You remove your shoes before you climb up the stairs,
a Velux window lies where the attic might have been.
A cupola of light makes all the difference to the inner
courtyard of my life. I am angle-poised, ready for vision.
It’s an art gallery! You exclaim, taking in the miniature
prints and paintings, works of embroidery,
archways framing landscapes richer than tapestries –
pictures changing with hours and angles of light.
The old-fashioned windows in the rest of my home
rattle like an old nanny crooning me to sleep,
stirring me to open the curtains, let the moonlight in.
You talk about new programmes in word for windows,
lost in the realm of global markets and cyber space.
Is this how I’ll recall your profile silhouetted
against the gleaming glass window,
talking about times to come, lives past –
as if talking to yourself, saying you’ve decided
to spend your birthday with your parents?
I draw the blinds, remember opening a shutter
in my ancestral home to admire the monsoon storm –
a lifetime of homesickness comes avalanching down.
Tonight we open another casement, switch on the TV –
watch helplessly how frail windows and doors can be,
failing to protect children and women traumatized
by war in their streets, bomb-shattered,
turned incomprehensibly into killing fields.
The news does not ease our vulnerability
as it moves on to places where hurricanes sweep
away homes, pillaging life and property.
I can no longer recall what it felt like to be truly desired,
I gaze into your eyes but can find no help there.
Only the memory of your voice:
Wait for things to come to you.
As I wait for things to be revealed to me,
Life and Time have their way.
Love grows wings and flies out of hearts and homes.
Love, that many-splendored thing, will not stay
still, be entombed and expected to rise like a saviour.
If only we could save our feelings in files for windows.
I turn to the trees outside my open window.
The leaves have a session with me complaining
of their fate, of having no choice, no opportunity
to escape from the light of day, rugged chefs in green,
slaves of photosynthesis –
no freedom to fly the skies like birds surveying
the earth’s artistry, eyes looking out, looking in…
The jharokhas of my mind are magical looking glasses –
desire dances feverishly on stained-glass windows of my cathedral,
swooning like flies against walls that limit my explorations.
Imagine: New and Selected Poems, from Looking In, Looking Out (2005)
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Vigil
All through the dark, desolate night
memories of childhood kept me company,
with you steady as the flame
keeping vigil over our family.
Grief-stricken, we lay stunned
explosions of pain shattering our epicentre
like the earthquake in Gujarat devouring families.
Silently we contemplate the unfolding of our lives,
its quiet purpose in bringing us together –
father, mother, brother, sister,
the relationships knitting us through the ages.
Where do our deepest thoughts come from?
Who brings us these tidings of love?
Are we like the earth yielding to the insatiable ocean,
being moulded into something new over centuries?
As we keep vigil through the night,
trusting the clay lamp to burn bright,
not flicker, leaving you in confusion –
soaking its wick in ghee,
reading messages scratched on planets,
we hope all this will hasten
the ascent of your soul
in its journey to worlds unknown.
I half-dream though half-awake
of you in exquisite colours,
rich hues of maroon, golden, purple,
memories quivering like fanned tails of peacocks.
Imagine: New and Selected Poems, from Shringara (2006)
Black Swans
The highly expected not happening is also a Black Swan.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Look into your own history –
exile from family, friends, country,
betrayed by those you placed your faith in,
always living at the margins.
Yet nothing, yes nothing in your past
pointed to the unfurling of the present.
What has been, what might have been –
two fractured landmasses drifting in time
acquiring individual perspectives,
not parallel lines meeting in infinity.
You wander down lanes of lives never lived,
reconciling what might have been with reality.
Is there free will? you ask as you sink,
failing to swim against the tide, knowing
only dead fish swim with the stream.
Immense possibilities only appear
to be evenly distributed; not knowing the odds
we take risks, act against the gods.
There is no way of knowing what we don’t know.
No way of protecting us against uncertainty.
We build theories like terracotta armies,
fallible guesses from fragmentary information,
success or failure being always retrospective.
Our limitations echo in memory,
rearing up in dreams of the seemingly impossible,
our own lives, elegant black swans, in full flight….
Imagine: New and Selected Poems, from Dreams That Spell the Light (2010)
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Imagine
The song of humpbacked whales,
breath of life flowing through conch shells,
uniquely decorated flukes falling on waves,
huge white flippers slapping the water.
Imagine a grizzly bear on its haunches
in the bend of the river scooping up silver slivers,
tossing minnows into its yawning mouth.
Forests, canyons, rivers, waterfalls, double rainbows,
the laughter of lightning holding us in thrall.
Blush of a bride, the sky at sunrise, sunset,
spreading in wild abandonment.
Imagine cloud formations of changing configurations,
dove white to crow black, altocumulus to tornado chasers.
Smile of a camel filling the loneliness of a desert,
a cheetah in motion, the dance of King Cobras.
Sighing of leaves when the wind gives them a shake,
hawks soaring on tides of air, wild wings streamlined.
A colony of bats singing, meditating upside down
on an ancient tree grown large as a grandparent.
The majesty of a reclusive snow leopard disappearing
in a blizzard on the slopes of Mount Everest.
A smoking volcano blowing spectacular hoops
of fire, pouring molten lava for days,
depositing ash on the tray of land.
Imagine a stately cavalcade of moving mountains of ice
in the Arctic, shimmering with the aurora borealis.
Brightly coloured wings of a butterfly hovering,
their translucency in moonlight revealing…
Now open your eyes wide and imagine
our rich world bereft of nature’s blessing.
Imagine: New and Selected Poems, from Imagine: New Poems (2017)
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All You Can Do
Here’s your thunder stolen by others,
your losses, ships that never return.
Here’s your life passing slowly by,
your body of song promising all it can do.
Here’s your heart reaching out to others,
your thoughts fresh rays of sun.
Here’s your dream scattered across the sky,
falling stars not knowing what they can do.
Here’s hope, gold at the edge of the rainbow,
casting a spell on us as we go.
Here’s your fear walking in front of you,
thinking there is nothing you can do.
Here’s my hand, place yours in mine,
I’ll show you the world is yours.
Here’s your true love waiting for you,
your tree of life, radiant in bloom.
Here’s what you do, what you can do,
it’s your future, make of it what you will –
Here’s life in all its squalor and splendor,
here’s your world and all you can do.
What Survives Is The Singing (2020)
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