Indran Amirthanayagam

During the Transition, a poem

2024-11-30T20:24:00.000-08:00

During the Transition

The Resistance has begun.

On X the Poetry Foundation

will no longer post any new

material, opting instead

for good old Facebook

and its child Instagram.

I have used salty words

about my erstwhile heroes

still in 1600 Pennsylvania

so help them God.

I am not hawking

Ten Thousand Steps

Against the Tyrant

any more although

I don’t deny the poems.

Like Jack Smith

the Special Prosecutor

I may leave the scene

before the shit hits

on January 20, protect

myself from the wrath

of the Revenger. How?

With a new set of praise

poems, directed

at the Grand Wizard,

Pennsylvania Jesus

resurrected in Butler?

Remember that town,

now a place of pilgrimage,

where the campaign

victory became inevitable,

the raised fist, Red Road Rage?

Indran Amirthanayagam c) November 28, 2024

Thanks, With An Eye To The Near Term, a poem

2024-11-28T18:14:00.000-08:00

Thank you who read these words,

friends, men, women, children,

gays, trans, minorities, everybody

who shepherded this poet

into the wilderness and out

again, ensconced and cradled

in hands, on laps, in hearts.

in the passenger seat while

I drove from border town

to watering hole,

to the city center

to sip cappuccinos,

nibble cake and sit back

and smile together

at the surreal stories clowns

as politicians unfurled

to bamboozle us

as we stared catatonic

at the latest declaration

of war against our neighbor

and friend, and war against

every value our mother

taught us to believe,

for the greater good

and the more fitting society,

handed over on a tray

to the Butcher of Queens,

the Bogey Man of the Tower,

the Quack who says he will stop

this and that war in the first hour

on his first day

(...or the day after..,or never).

Indran Amirthanayagam c) November 27, 2024

REVIVAL; A Poem On the Eve of the U.S. Elections

2024-11-02T11:32:00.000-07:00

Revival

To vote or not to vote, that is not

the question or the dilemma. Mark

a ballot for the candidate who

wants to keep the ship floating

or the other who wants to crash it,

both supported by capital, my capital

against yours, my ads versus your

deep fakes. There are differences still

between these two, not only their sexes,

not only their relationship to laws

and their administration. Yet, I wonder

about flaws through which the blood

of innocents flows, bombed by capital,

weighing of profit and colonial dominion

even now in the Age of Independence,

of post colonial bliss. Surely that blood

must be honored and from it nourish

some better, more fitting ecosystem

without great powers, power blocks

and communities of interest but finally

one world, one dream, one song

Indran Amirthanayagam c) All Souls Day, November 3, 2024

Para Silvio

2024-08-18T07:39:00.000-07:00

Para Silvio

Silvio Santos (1930-2024)

Maravilhosa a mão que Silvio Santos

estendida, a maneira como dançava

e sorria, nos fazia rir e chorar de alegria,

seu generoso apoio a tantos

jovens artistas que chegavam

na cidade, aos quais ele deu

sua primeira chance, de cantar

para uma multidão

pessoalmente, na televisão.

Silvio Santos, que poderia

ter se tornado presidente

do país se não fosse

por algumas falhas burocráticas

nas assinaturas coletadas

para registrar seu partido.

A assinatura final

é a de cada um de nós

que passamos nossos domingos

em sua companhia, rindo

e chorando agora na memória.

Indran Amirthanayagam dr 17 de agosto de 2024

BASTA, a poem.

2023-11-07T05:24:00.005-08:00

Basta

“Basta”-- Pope Francisco, November 6, 2023

Basta. Enough. Stop killing

children in Gaza and Israel.

Cease fire. Let leaders wise

or mad, it does not matter.

We have no time for

psychological evaluations.

Let these directors

of the tragedy meet

in a foreign capital

to make peace. Do not

kill innocents anymore.

Stop. Too much. This

is not complicated,

not difficult

to understand

Do not kill new

generations, their

fathers and mothers.

Stanch hatred

rising among

survivors.

Indran Amirthanayagam c) November 6, 2023

We Did It! a poem about landing on the Southern Pole of the Moon

2023-08-24T08:45:00.001-07:00

We did it!

Engineers roar, slap each other's

backs, go gaga as Chandrayaan-3

sends Vikram to land on

the Southern Pole of the Moon

opening to the intrepid Pragyan

that will go a-roaming where

no robot has gone before. This

is a huge step for India, yes,

and for the rest of us as we

see our kind cross boundaries

that exist only in the mind,

drawing planetary sustenance

from this feat. Experiments

the rover conducts will be

monitored on Earth, adding

I hope to discussion about

nations, pride and back-

slapping, that universalists

beam into our screens now,

not politicians who ride

on the coattails of engineers,

who bow for achievements

they cannot embody,

although Mother India

is older than any single

leader, and minorities

of all sorts are to be found

among the Chandrayaan staff.

Indran Amirthanayagam c) August 23, 2023

A Day Of Service (Trump's Booking), a poem. Indran Amirthanayagam

2023-04-05T16:01:00.000-07:00

A Day of Service (Trump's Booking)

He used to be president. He said once

he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue

and shoot a man and he would walk away

free. Today he was arraigned for paying

off Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about

their past affair while he campaigned

to take the oath and lead the country

through what turned out to be a series

of ruinous events, including the dying

of millions during the pandemic.

He entered court, seeming befuddled,

did not say a word, then left and drove

in a motorcade along the BQE, swept

ahead by the police, to the hangar

where his 757 waited to fly him back

to Florida. Meanwhile, his lawyers

bemoaned the “unfair” charges

while in Washington today a group

of Latin American exiles visited

to plead their arguments about Venezuela,

Nicaragua and Cuba before the OAS

and State. They came by car from Miami,

a much longer trip than the rich man Trump's.

I met them at the State Department's

door, allowed them to take a photograph

with the flags, and just outside, to raise

their own banner and denounce tyranny

in their homelands. I felt I had been

of some service, opened the door

to the ordinary citizen, one of whom

had spent almost five years

in a Havana jail, for charges related

to assembly and speech. I am not

a Little Havana republican. But

I will denounce crimes when

committed and without discriminating

against any perpetrator, including

the free-shooting 5th avenue huckster

turned ex Commander in Chief,

Mr. Donald John Trump.

Indran Amirthanayagam, c) April 4, 2023

The Rulers, a poem. Indran Amirthanayagam

2023-03-27T20:05:00.003-07:00

The Rulers

We are teachers today and kids.

We are kids today and teachers.

We are thirteen years old stabbing

our professor in the playground

at Thomasia Montoro public school

in São Paulo. We are twenty eight

years old and female with two

automatic rifles and a handgun

killing three nine-year-olds

and three sixty-somethings

at the Covenant school

in Nashville. What distinguishes

a public from private, state

from religious school? Nothing.

Nothing. Nothing. In each

guns and knives rule.

Indran Amirthanayagam c) March 27, 2023

Cada seis horas, um poema escrito neste Dia Internacional Da Mulher

2023-03-08T12:22:00.005-08:00

Cada seis horas

A verdade que você sinala

neste Dia Intenacional

da Mulher não tem resposta.

O fato que morre cada

seis horas uma mulher

a mão do seu namorado

no Brasil, um país

que celebra tais misturas

é mais que alarmante

e se eu começo

a inquirir nos diverses

países do mundo

incluindo Estados Unidos

(onde o número diário

e tres, ainda alarmante)

e alguns outros onde

assassinar a mulher

por respeitar o honor

da família é considerado

um direito. Não.

Não tenho resposta.

Indran Amirthanayagam dr) o 8 março, 2023

We Are All Chileans Now, a poem (In Memoriam: Pablo Neruda) Indran Amirthanayagam

2023-02-18T19:31:00.002-08:00

We Are All Chileans Today

The poet did not pass only from a broken

heart, not because he could not eat as

his prostate cancer spread, not after

he read of Salvador Allende bombed

in the Moneda, not walking out alive.

The poet died because of

clostridium botulinum injected into

his stomach while he slept in Santa Maria

clinic, Santiago, alone inexplicably while

his wife and driver packed bags at Isla Negra

for the family's flight to exile in Mexico.

He was killed in a hospital by a third party

according to forensic scientists examining

the remains. The third party cannot silence

the poet. The third party cannot say love

is short and forgetting long.The third party

will not be allowed to have the last word

in the history of Chile, of democracy.

Indran Amirthanayagam, c) February 18, 2023

https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/book-reviews/power-words-and-power-desire-manuel-ulacias-origami-jonathan-harrington

2023-02-07T12:24:00.000-08:00

https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/book-reviews/power-words-and-power-desire-manuel-ulacias-origami-jonathan-harrington

Interview with Indran Amirthanayagam at www.hangingloosepress.com

2023-02-02T17:07:00.003-08:00

https://www.hangingloosepress.com/news-events/catching-up-with-indran-amirthanayagam

Peru, By A Thread. A poem.

2023-01-26T08:42:00.003-08:00

Perú, By A Thread

Perspective is everything.

Peruvian press owned

by white elites who

dismiss the chola hordes,

the new president

accompanied by ministers

from Fujimori’s dictatorship,

daughter Keiko just released

from her chargesheet.

The cards are decked

in dear old Peru. So when

you see a peasant throwing

stones and hear the crack

of bullets fired by police

in return, when the stone-

thrower has no job

or money or prospects

while copper mining

conglomerates trade

on precious metals

markets, and artisanal

Amazon gold diggers

are hounded by Army

and police gangs

in the name of

biodiversity, when

nobody invests enough

to give farmers

in the VRAEM alternative

crops to the coca leaf,

when elites, defended

by misguided and

brainwashed police,

lament the shaking

down of their august

institutions, the stock

market, the courts,

Jockey Plaza and all

the plazas of the

commercial Peruvian

disney world, then

take a deep breath,

step back or step

forward but do not

allow the new

rulers to stamp

upon your inalienable

right to say no,

and to vote again,

not in two years

but as soon as

elections can be

arranged in the

one country still

called Perú.

Indran Amirthanayagam, c) January 21, 2023

What's Next, a poem. Indran Amirthanayagam

2022-05-27T03:52:00.004-07:00

What's Next?

We are not going to give the fellows a pass with expressions of condolence,

minutes of silence, then off they go to the NRA Convention in Houston

while leaving instructions to block the latest attempt to forgive student loans,

increase funds for Covid tests, fund food stamps, allow a woman the right

to choose, and ban littering in national parks, or force the wearing of masks.

I am tired and hungry, friends, repeating the litany, naming all the blockages,

scrimmages, jostling and gerrymandering, mouthing off and filibustering

that we call a democracy. We must ban guns outright. Eliminate any sacred

or sacrilegous right to bear them hidden or not in public. Can you imagine

that Texan law allows for this? That the deranged eighteen-year-old murderer

of nineteen kids and two teachers did not have to account for the guns he used –

albeit against the law by stepping on to school grounds--to massacre and remind

us that we have so much to do to heal first and then build this democracy

to assure the safety of all who live here, so help us God.

Indran Amirthanayagam, c) May 25, 2022

This Time, a poem. Indran Amirthanayagam

2022-05-24T17:45:00.003-07:00

This Time

Horror, foul murder. butchering children, this America always

with us, kept in news clips, remembered where I found myself

the day the music...and all the accumulated rage about innocents

in America, Asia, Europe ,Australia, Africa, will they ever get

justice? Why allow killers to arm? Abbott, do you not feel

any remorse, responsibility as governor letting murderers

roam with handguns, rifles, shot guns, automatic weapons

in your state which has suffered at least three mass killings

over the last two years? When will they stop? Will they ever

stop? Will you at least leave your office and allow somebody

else to ban the sale of guns by executive order? Will all senators,

governors and congressmen who have shouted for the right

to bear arms receive the pink slip at some future ballot box?

How can we clean house of millions of fire arms and fiery

mouths, bragging, blathering blowhards? How can this

poem reach all possible decisionmakers, from school boards

to police chiefs to politicians and judges? How can it be

read on the agenda of the Supreme Court? God, can we make

a difference now, finally, once and for all, find justice and create

a safer, resilient democracy in the United States of America?

Indran Amirthanayagam, c) May 24, 2022

Middle East Encounter, a poem: Indran Amirthanayagam

2022-05-21T07:40:00.003-07:00

Middle East Encounter

Seeds were roasted on za'atar and grape leaves stuffed

with sweetmeats. Falafel balls rolled on the platter

and hummus and babaganoush sloshed patiently

in bowls as we dipped pita bread and talked of atrocities

from the eternal front, but we spoke with joy as musicians

shook tambours and beat drums, as dancers raised hands

and swirled in front of us, and on arriving home you sent

me the latest articles, what Sunday scribes opined and

human rights groups, their press releases, even the U.N.

chief calling for investigation knowing that a vote

in the Security Council would be vetoed by one

or more of the permanent members. We know

the ritual. We know the score. But we go on,

exhausting all civil means, calling on morality,

shame, writing poems, appealing to the conscience

of presidents and prime ministers, that they insist

on unearthing truth, from where the errant or targeted

bullet came, and who must now take the blame.

Indran Amirthanayagam, c) May 15, 2022

Woman In A Field, Indran Amirthanayagam ( inspired by "Where the Wildflowers Grow" by Victoria Twomey

2022-05-05T14:40:00.003-07:00

Woman In A Field

I want to paint your sky blue skirt spotted

with hundreds of white islands, ocean on land

before a primrosed field, grass green, hair

a flame, talisman beside my keyboard, gift

received. I thank you now, and dream of

a world beyond my own eyes, of essences,

sky,water, woman, primroses, grass. I say

the peace that came dropping slow drops

for me as well as I gaze on poppies, butter-

cups next to primroses. I can catch them all

in a net of wildflowers, and you how shall

I name your abandon before field and sky wearing

the ocean on your body? How shall I turn away?

Will you walk with me reading these lines?

Indran Amirthanayagam, c) May 5, 2022

FROM FLORIDA, WITH LOVE

2022-04-19T04:41:00.005-07:00

From Florida, with Love

K.K.M are the initials of the federal judge who just struck down the C.D.C rule

requiring face masks on public transport, buses, trains, planes. K.K.M. says

the C.D.C exceeded its authority and failed to follow proper procedure in setting

the rule, whose target, the pesky Covid 19, is irrelevant in her view. The millon

U.S. dead from various variations, the latest known as BA.2, did not enter

her judgment, could not be admitted into her considered thinking. No, for K.K.M

the rule has been violated, or perhaps misinterpreted in the name of some greater

good, like preservation of life, or supporting the damned Democrats. Yes, folks,

KKM was appointed by the former president, the orange-haired preacher of fire,

brimstone and falsehoods, who tore off his mask on the parapet of the White House

for the world to see ( while gloating). The footer to the palace scene failed to note

that he had just been administered a rare drug that cured him of the virus

that ravaged his fellow Americans. But now, all of this will be corrected,

the rule enforced, and from a federal court in the sunny state of Florida.

Indran Amirthanayagam,c) April 18,2022

On International Women's Day: Indran Amirthanayagam

2022-03-08T13:00:00.000-08:00

On International Women's Day

On this early Spring day in the Beltway I think of all the women

who have woken me up, fed and clothed me, teased and got me

out of bed and into walking shoes, who have inspired my writing

books, who give me a pacific healing embrace when I start to stiffen,

fall into despair; and then I think of women poets who have taught

my lyrics to dance, of Sylvia Plath's rhythms, Emily Dickinson's

ellipses and dashes, of fragments that remain of the enigmatic

Sappho, and then of diplomats and poets, of Rosario Castellanos,

Gabriela Mistral who spread her lyrics in the League of Nations.

So today, friends, I celebrate women who have helped to make

me a poet and diplomat, a boy turned into man, a friend embracing

the child and birth while cries of the murdered are calling out

from the battle fields that engage their troops despite

this day where hope and rhyme entwine.

Indran Amirthanayagam c) March 8, 2022

A mi muerte: Karen Romero

2021-03-19T21:34:00.001-07:00

Resurrection, a poem by Indran Amirthanayagam

2020-09-17T06:31:00.001-07:00

La poesía como salvación, una lectura de The Migrant States, por Enrique Bernales

2020-07-13T18:37:00.000-07:00

69 Vistas

Indran Amirthanayagam es un poeta prolífico, siempre migrando de una a otra casa lingüística. Así, mientras escribo esta reseña sobre su último libro de poesía en inglés, The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, Brooklyn, New York, 2020), acaba de salir otro libro suyo en francés, Sur l’île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, 2020), cuyo tema principal es la isla de Haití, tan presente en su poesía.

Indran nació en el seno de la comunidad tamil en Ceilán, un país que, como el mismo ha señalado en diferentes entrevistas, ya no existe. ¿Qué significa que una administración cambie su nombre de Ceilán a Sri Lanka? Los nombres de los territorios son esenciales para entender cuál es el discurso de las élites que construyen el ideal de la comunidad nacional. Así cuando la isla se llamaba Ceilán, la comunidad tamil formaba parte integral de la nación. Por otro lado, cuando se refunda la isla como Sri Lanka — Isla Bella en sánscrito — es la mayoría singalesa (74.9%) la que impone su visión al territorio, siendo la comunidad tamil (4.2%) a la que pertenece el poeta, traductor, profesor y diplomático, una de las grandes perjudicadas, consecuencia de eso fue la cruenta Guerra Civil iniciada por el movimiento de Los Tigres Tamiles que buscaba la independencia de los territorios considerados históricamente tamiles en el norte y el este de la administración y conocidos también como Eelam — la Patria en tamil.

The Migrant States es un libro donde el poeta, la poesía, la isla y el eterno movimiento de la migración original crean un encuentro con las diversas comunidades con las que el autor ha interactuado a lo largo de su vida. El libro empieza y culmina con una sección dedicada a Walt Whitman con quien la voz poética ejecuta un diálogo magistral. Así, el poeta de Paumanok, el nombre nativo americano de la isla de Long Island, lugar de nacimiento del poeta nacional de los Estados Unidos de América, y el poeta de Ceilán o Eelam, poeta migrante, poeta de su nación tamil, danzan a lo largo del libro, que es una celebración de las lenguas, de todas las migraciones. The Migrant States es un encuentro y un intento de integrar en una nueva pequeña patria momentánea, las islas que conforman todas nuestras humanidades, así sucede con los Estados Unidos, con Haití, con Perú, entre otras hermosas y rebeldes geografías.

La poesía de The Migrant States continúa el mismo camino estético que el poeta ha creado a lo largo de todas sus publicaciones anteriores en múltiples lenguas, es decir, nos muestran el mapa — y el territorio — de lo que significa lo poético para el poeta: una invitación a descubrir y hermanarse en múltiples lenguas, un canal de vida que conecta nuevas tierras, nuevas islas donde los escritores y la vida diaria y complicada de los distintos lares son objeto de reconocimiento para este gran viajero poeta que como los grandes exploradores de la historia de la humanidad va coleccionando de cada comunidad con la que él ha interactuado, palabras, lenguajes poéticos, autores, nombres de ciudades, alegrías y tristezas, la esencia misma de sentirse un humano universal como lo fue a su manera el mismo Walt Whitman que colocó a la poesía de los Estados Unidos de América en el plano mundial, pero además en el cariño y admiración de su pueblo, el estadounidense, algo que para un poeta activista como Indran Amirthanayagam es de una urgencia vital para su escritura, para su itinerario metafórico.

Antes de entrar a las distintas secciones de este viaje que es The Migrant States, se incluyen dos poemas liminares, que son dos artes poéticas que generan una dinámica dialéctica entre ambas y a partir de la cual, el lector puede sumergirse en el mundo o la isla del lenguaje de la voz poética. Así “Mind Breathing” presenta en verso estrófico diferentes motivos de la poesía de Indran, la importancia de la lectura, la presencia de una figura señera de las letras locales o universales — que hace las veces de voz autorizada o figura paterna que permite al poeta fluir en esa persecución de la palabra poética como si se tratara de una cacería o un safari de significantes — un momento histórico destacado en la biografía del autor, la reflexión sobre la poesía misma y los detalles mundanos de la vida:

On November 17, 1960 I breathed for the first time without

maternal assistance, on a cot, at Macarthy Nursing Home,

a few blocks from our residence in Colombo.

Allen brought a harmonium as a carry-on music box

on his flight to Oahu. Back then nobody examined

strings for chemical traces, death marches, laments. (1)

En “This No Time for Criticism” el otro arte poética liminar, carente de organización estrófica, el sujeto poético autoexamina, autoevalúa la calidad de sus versos, testimonia los acontecimientos históricos del ultimo año y cómo su voz o escritura genera una sinergia con esa historia particular del mundo, para validar así su tono poético dentro del campo cultural. La voz del poeta, en este sentido, se reproduce de una manera muy distinta a otras voces con las que cohabita en la galaxia Gutemberg de las letras:

I realize my lines are not lyrical. They have no surprising leaps,

or rhythmic epiphanies. They are flat, a body shot on the street

visited by paramedics, wailing young men and women. We do

not discriminate in 2019. We are witnessing birth of a revolt,

a rejection, and you say my verse is agitprop, an unfit exercise

for poetry. I reply writing, that the body must be buried with dignity, (2)

Luego, el libro empieza, propiamente dicho, con la sección For Walt, título también de una sección intermedia y de la sección final que cierra el viaje por The Migrant States. ¿Qué comparten Whitman y Amirthanayagam? Pues, una isla con una matriz multicultural, una poesía que huye del hermetismo, que tiene una calidad de activismo hasta erguirse como un ethos nacional — Leaves of Grass y The Migrant States se hermanan a pesar de los siglos de diferencias como libros y poéticas que proponen una gran narrativa nacional — con firmes implicancias populares o que convocan al pueblo como referente o actante, cofundador y gobernante en la isla-nación poética. Así se afirma en Stop by: “I am in your debt, Walt, and to all the poets who gave birth to you and to those / you have sired in turn. Thank you. The word is good and in our hands now” (5). El nacimiento en la isla es el punto de inicio del viaje de los poetas, así sucede con Walt y con Indran, pero además ambas islas se funden generosas en el té que producen, Ceylon Tea y el también famoso y espirituoso Long Island Iced Tea. De este modo, en “After Midnight” la voz poética afirma:

Walter Whitman will come out of his mother’s ninth month midnight

tomorrow, the 31st of May, in the family room, at the Walter Whitman

home in West Hills, Huntington, Long Island, to be known henceforth

in all poetry as Paumanok, the birth island of the poet who at eleven (5)

El viaje por The Migrant States continúa con la sección titulada Curtain Call que, de acuerdo a los temas tratados y desarrollados en los diferentes poemas, se establece como un Bildungsroman de versos que abarcan el período de formación estética de la voz de los poemas, la misma que fluye en sus continuas migraciones de lengua en lengua, de país en país, buscando su propia voz, su propia isla-nación de poetas. De esta forma, se desarrolla en “Curtain Call”:

When you please, make the reader laugh, lighten

the baggage he carries around home, street and

office, you reach the first level of enlightenment,

then you pause, consulting the poets along

the way. Yeats wrote what then, Cavafy offered

that you cannot escape the city in which

you were born, Nazim dreamed of a straw blonde,

a night train across Europe, poplars falling

in the Turkey from which he remained in exile.

Exile is the modern condition, Ceylon felled (22)

Luego el lector llega a la sección titulada La Voix du Port con Haití como protagonista de esta travesía migrante de versos y sentires. Haití cala hondo en el sentir poético de Indran, su Ceilán natal y Haití comparten mucho, un pasado colonial, una actualidad compleja, al mismo tiempo, un sentir cultural intenso, propio de los habitantes de una isla. Así explora esas vivencias el hablante en el poema “We Are Spirit. We Are King.”:

You cannot deny my identity.

I am there even if I am not there.

I am in your head, in the memory

of the country. Even if you have

never met me I am there because

my Sri Lankan brothers

served on the island

as UN Peacekeepers. You know

the whole world came to Haiti

to save us from the gangs?

The island is very important,

a responsibility of foreign countries.

Once, we produced profits

greater than the 13 British

colonies in America. (33)

Nuevamente aparece en nuestro viaje por The Migrant States, una sección llamada For Walt, el gran leitmotif de este libro, el legado poético de Whitman y su pasado isleño representado en esa dualidad que es el territorio conocido como Long Island-Paumanok. En el poema “Setting Off” que es sinónimo de empezar un viaje, la voz poética da como una ofrenda sagrada sus versos al gran Dios de la poesía de los Estados Unidos de América, para que — así como se hace con el ídolo de Lord Ganesha que es internada en las aguas del Mar Arábigo para su Chaturthi, o fiesta de cumpleaños — esa otra divinidad que es el poeta de Camden, New Jersey, bendiga la travesía del migrante devoto, le concede la prosperidad — el Artha — en este caso literaria, al acercarse con sus ofrendas de versos sinceros y de prístina emoción, tal es el sentir de los versos tamiles de Indran:

Walt explodes on impact in the mind. Nothing becomes everything,

everything nothing,

the equation turned inside out: poems, democratic practice, phrenology,

the discovery

of India. There is no pebble from under which Walt does not peep out. I

fell in love

with him again at the Walt Whitman rest stop on the New Jersey

Turnpike. (39)

Posteriormente se llega a la sección central que da nombre a todo el conjunto, The Migrant States. Aquí la voz poética explora las complejidades del ser estadounidense, aparece nuevamente la patria pérdida, la isla de Ceilán, y también Sudamérica, Lima y la selva del Perú. Como lo he señalado anteriormente, ser estadounidense significa — de acuerdo a lo que plantea el sujeto de estos poemas — sentirse de todas partes del mundo, sentirse un poco haitiano, un poco tamil, un poco peruano, un poco de New Jersey, ese es el verdadero Melting Pot al que apunta la esencia de estos versos poderosos e inspiradores, ser estadounidense, finalmente, es llevar todo el mundo consigo mismo. En el poema “Lima, January” se logra retratar al detalle la atmósfera de ese espacio llamado Lima, durante un día de verano en enero, ese espacio que bien podría ser un barrio de New Jersey que el hablante desconoce, como para mí era Boston cuando vivía allí, un barrio de Lima que nunca se había explorado, es que el mundo es nuestra casa y ésa es la característica de estos versos que nos aproximan a esos territorios, a esas ciudades que habitan en nuestro corazón migrante:

It is summer here,

hot for the moment,

plantain tree bearing fruit

in the garden, passion and

mango in the shops, a lot

of fish, the country blessed

by the Humboldt Current

which brings cold water

from the Antarctic and

plentiful anchovies with it

to feed up the food chain (63)

Departures es la sección que nos anuncia que el viaje está llegando a su fin, es un momento para rendir un sentido homenaje con los versos a los que se fueron, incluyendo la figura señera del padre del poeta, también sirve para comentar las partidas del migrante a otro país, a otra ciudad por devorar literariamente con la vista, con la escritura, con el canto, con la palabra. The Migrant States es una ciudad poética, constituye un Aleph de todos los tiempos, todas las anécdotas, todos los saberes donde finalmente nos asombramos de estar mirando nuestro propio rostro, tal como ocurrió con madre Yashoda cuando encontró el Aleph en la boca de su amado niño, Krishna Vasudeva. Los versos del poema “Summer, Chess (for Anandan)” expresan con sencillez y virtuosismo el vivir en la pérdida y en la partida, esa dialéctica propia del ser y el sentir migrante que, en este caso espécifico, ha encontrado un hogar en esa constante reproducción de sentido de la palabra sencilla:

You go now and I am sad,

and the sadness will spill

into late summer

and autumn until we meet

again when the leaves

fall and chestnuts

smack our memories (77)

La lectura del libro concluye con la tercera sección titulada For Walt. En el inicio era Walt, en el final sigue siendo Walt. Esta vez, el último homenaje ritual busca que la voz poética consiga la bendición y la autorización para salir de la isla, que es una metáfora para referirse al maravilloso mundo de la imaginación poética en la que habita el hablante y que tiene por nombre Paumanok, pero que bien podría llamarse Ceilán, pero jamás Sri Lanka. Así los versos de “Gone from Paumanok” inciden en la tradición poética en la que se inspira el hablante de los poemas de The Migrant States, en las palabras y la vida sencilla, en suma, una estética familiar y, al mismo tiempo, rebelde y contestataria, llena de mucha humanidad y de un sentir isleño particular:

I feel I must end with a bang, at least a shake and a whistle,

a riff, a taste, a dance on a dime. I want to end because

suites must finish, poems arrive at the punch line, the final

full stop. I am not sure if I can go on like the sea, ridden

with plastics, with patches dead even to oxygen. I am not

sure I can whirl in space like a meteor, an asteroid

or some rubbish from a failed satellite. I am not after all

a celestial body, or a golden sunflower, just a fifty-eightyear-

old man a few hundred miles from Paumanok

and stopped—owing to family ties, to work and the need

to build a house, high enough to avoid the rain when it floods. (79)

Para culminar puedo afirmar que The Migrant States se nos presenta como un app, una aplicación o una tecnología de la migración que nos invita a ejecutar un nuevo pacto con las tierras que habitamos, reconociendo el valor de las diferentes lenguas, comunidades y culturas que pueblan un territorio. The Migrant States nos propone un nuevo pacto para salir de la simulación llamada Melting Pot que no buscaba el generoso encuentro o la valorización de las múltiples lenguas y tradiciones en los Estados Unidos de América, sino, su respectiva asimilación, su desaparición en una supuesta nación multicultural, constituida para y por el interés de las élites que respondían a un sino caucásico, sobre todo. De esta manera, las diversidades debían ser absorbidas o sacrificadas. The Migrant States es un app o tecnología que propone exactamente lo contrario: el canto, en constante migración o movimiento, que incorpora múltiples lenguas, tradiciones, autores, objetos; evitando precisamente su asimilación y celebrando su alegre y necesaria diferencia. Por eso mismo, considero imperativa la lectura de The Migrant States en las escuelas secundarias y en las universidades de los Estados Unidos de América para que las nuevas generaciones reflexionen y estudien la importancia de la migración como un estado de vida esencial para la especie humana como lo ha sido desde hace miles de años.

Too Much

2020-06-26T17:33:00.002-07:00

Too Much

I don't think anyone has ever written a book about this,

he tells me, tongue in jowl, but I suspend my disbelief

just long enough falling completely before the joke

then smiling widely and on all sides of my face

and the subject. So, yes I am writing a book about love.

I wrote before about a tsunami and an uncivil war. Now

I write not quite about a tsunami although sadness hits

like a wall of water and I have visited black, bottomless

pits and the edges of ponds that seem like rousing rivers

roaring to a nearby precipitous drop. And I have felt

slings like teargas canisters fogging my eyes and head

as I swig a tumbler of whiskey and peer at the midnight

screen imagining the street scene near the White House,

citizens protesting against murder of black brothers

and sisters as I think of my island love whose heart

is no longer open to nostalgias of the past once

it decided that geography, a couple of bodies of water,

an ocean, and the gulf of age, were too much.

Indran Amirthanayagam, c) June 17, 2020

Black, A Poem. Indran

2020-06-10T13:15:00.001-07:00

Black

Black Lives Matter. Your life matters. Black Lives

Matter. The Mad Hatter's Life Matters. And his right

to change his name, to wipe the mad prejudice

out of words matters. Black Lives Matter. My life

matters. Black Lives Matter. All lives matter. Black

Lives Matter. The squirrel's life matters. Black Lives

Matter. The elephants eat bamboo, and babies gather

round their mothers, and there are no electric fences

or shot guns and there is earth to roam and there are

paths to forge. Black Lives Matter. The police chief,

senator, assemblyman, garbage collector, teacher

and poet and all other professions and creatures

on all arks of the world join the march along

16^th Street in Washington D.C. beside giant

yellow letters shouting Black Lives Matter.

Indran Amirthanayagam, c) June 10, 2020

Otra Iglesia Es Imposible: Indran Amirthanayagam / Contra la ilusión

2019-02-14T18:59:00.001-08:00

Otra Iglesia Es Imposible: Indran Amirthanayagam / Contra la ilusión: Hay una distracción al parecer, un puesto de atención a alguna nueva mariposa. Pero ya no soy un mozo. Ya no tengo gana...