[Reader-list] The View from Zero Bridge - poetry of Lynn Aarti Chandhok with the flavour of Kashmir

[cashmeeri]

http://www.lynnchandhok.com/
Three poems by Lynn Aarti Chandhok with the flavour of Kashmir.
 

1. The View from Zero Bridge
 
My father made his way to Zero Bridge
Before the sun slipped up the riverbed
And lighted plum groves — long before the cars,
Carts, rickshaws, trucks, and bicycles emerged,
Dew-slick at dawn, into the dust. He passed
Our shuttered shop, passed Ram Bagh Road, arrived
And, with his camera, peered over the edge
On long shikaras jostling side by side,
Their pointed noses wedged on the stone slab,
Their open bellies full — kohlrabi, beets,
Red carrots, long green kuddu, string beans — rows
Piled patchwork, high as each small boat could hold.
The farmers, barefoot, balanced at the edges,
Haggling, counting, weighing. He framed and shot
 
A young man in an orange cabled sweater
Swinging a bale of okra to his shoulder;
A pyramid of eggplants on a scale;
A farmer setting weights to balance them,
The wind across the Jhelum billowing
His gray pajama. After the shutter closed,
The farmers tipped their heart-shaped paddles, turned,
And rowed to Dal Lake’s maze of floating gardens.
 
It must have been our last year. Had he known,
He would have waited for the shot he missed:
The empty boats, the paddles poised to break
Morning’s gold film, laid thin across the lake.
 
 
2. Marketplace
   Kashmir, 1999 
 
The clattering horse-drawn carriages, the horns,
the hawkers all fall silent in the flash,
then chaos rises, shattering paradise.
My loss is trivial: a childhood home
to which return would be a senseless risk
just to confirm that paradise was real.
True, even as a child I understood
that bitterness had bled into the earth
beneath the dahlias, leached into the roots
of zinnias, marigolds, to murky lakes
where lotus lay, flat-leaved, blooming in bright
profusions out of quiet pools. I knew
that past the ridge we climbed that August day
to find a hidden lake one might mistake
for sky itself, beyond this, nestled down
between the peaks were border guards, two bands
of men who, facing off, kept peace: the peace
men fought for, not the other peace—the one
we found that day along the mountain ridge, 
the air distilled, the silence cooled by clouds;
the peace that let the glaciers age unmoved,
and painted Himalayan peaks in grays
that shifted off the setting sun to blue;
the peace that marked the end of evening prayer,
the ancient song drawn down to whispering 
Om shanti, shanti, shanti, om.
 
We'll move again. Though the borders haven't changed
for more than fifty years, we can't forget
the train cars burned—a body for a body.
On either side, the only truth is loss,
and blame is strewn like wreckage or debris,
the storylines, disputed maps, redrawn.

 
3. The Carpet MasterAt each loom, sitting Buddha-like, there's one
old man who reads the pattern off a scrap
of paper bag he's tucked into the strings.
The penciled letters look like notes. He sings
instructions like a prayer—the rag's a map
of roads that bleed like watercolor, run
the wrong direction, double back, then bloom
into a tree in bloom. The workers hear
the melody as knots, not notes, the line
as dots to be connected. Rows entwine
according to a master plan that's clear
only to the old man—until the loom
recedes, leaving a veil of silk threads bound
by what's unspoken, taking shape from sound.-----------------------------
Lynn Aarti Chandok teaches high school English in Brooklyn, New York. She grew up in Pittsburg and spent many childhood summers in Kashmir
 
"The View from Zero Bridge" was her first book. It won the 2006 Philip Levine Prize. 
 
"The View from Zero Bridge" :
 
*  semifinalist for the 2005 Walt Whitman Prize (Academy of American Poets)
*  finalist for the Beatrice Hawley Prize, the Colorado Prize, and the Agha Shahid Ali Prize (all in 2005)
*  In 2006, it was a finalist for the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Donald Justice Prize, the Prairie Schooner Prize, the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Prize, the Ontario Prize, the Benjamin Saltman Prize, and the Stan and Tom Wick Prize, as well as a semifinalist for the Agnes Starrett Lynch Prize, the University of Wisconsin's Brittingham/Pollack Prize, and the Saturnalia Prize.
 
In 2006, Lynn received the Morton Marr Poetry Prize (Southwest Review);  was a Distinguished Entry in the Campbell Corner Prize (Sarah Lawrence College); and  was a runner-up for the Spoon River Poetry Review Editor's Prize.