Poem of the week: Autumn by Vidyan Ravinthiran

The Guardian

2 days ago

Autumn (after John Keats)
The fallen yellow leaves now oftener
flare red. Embers. Blown-up chilli-flakes.
The burning of the library at Jaffna.
Foreign dead about to break
the spell of here and now. Phantasms steal
into the peaceful lives we seem to have earned,
telling tales about what happened
to them, not us, and in a tongue I never learned.
This is my garden, my spade of blood meal
and from our kitchen the time-travelling smell
of chicken curry floats to Walden Pond.
– A swooping cardinal like a struck match.
Above the fence mosquitoes eddy
like opinion, crazed by a patch,
of red-pink light into giddy
scribbling on the air. There is no need
to be ashamed. I see you there and keep
alive the thought of meeting one day
brightly after the next. Black mustard seed
thrums in the sauce, the sky falls asleep;
where feelings come from or may leap
across and through and to no one can say.
Tsunami-hit, shoved over at a tilt,
they've left the bashed old kovil's god-thronged tower
standing tallish, beyond the new one built
to face, this time, becalm, the ocean's power …
Our autumn clouds are a far-quarried rubble
to which the changing light does spicy things.
To sing, to fly, migrate, are curious verbs;
beauty, like happiness, frailly reliable,
has nothing to do with why there are wings,
why birds build nests and sing their songs,
or why barbed wire's besotted with its barbs.
Contemporary poetry collections often fall into one of two dominant categories. One kind travels thoughtfully, claiming spaces in an unfamiliar elsewhere, the other stays at home, revisiting and refining material that's more familiar.
Avidyā, Vidyan Ravinthiran's latest, represents for me the exploratory kind, a tour that skirts the flames of history in a relaxed almost self-effacing manner. This is especially true of Autumn. The subtitle's qualification after slyly denotes the time and distance between the two poems. Keats wrote his ode To Autumn on 19 September 1819. The England-born Sri Lankan poet is writing more than two centuries later; since Keats's time Sri Lanka has been colonised by the British, granted independence, endured civil war and seen terrible reprisals against the Tamil Tigers for their armed struggle for independence. The autumnal redness the poem evokes soon turns to fire.
A rhythm of stops and starts underlines the threat: 'The fallen yellow leaves now oftener / flare red. Embers. Blown-up chilli-flakes. / The burning of the library at Jaffna.' Keats, reading over the poet's shoulder, might remember Peterloo (critics have found that massacre in his ode's possible subtext of 'surveillance') and realise that the 21st century poet is also witness to less than 'mellow fruitfulness'.
Autumn soon reveals the violent biblioclasm of 1981 when Jaffna Public Library, one of the biggest libraries in Asia and a major Tamil cultural centre, was burned down by a mob that included police and paramilitaries. But it isn't books and buildings alone that have been destroyed. The shapes emerging from the poet's past become the 'foreign dead', the 'phantasms' that 'steal / into the peaceful lives we seem to have earned.' Those phantasms give their version of events ('telling tales'), further distancing the poet by speaking 'in a tongue I never learned'. The ensuing jump of imagery, from the 'garden' declared his own, to the necessary 'spade of blood meal' is effectively plotted.
Danger is diffused by the magic, humour and resistance found in cookery. In many cultures, families and societies come together to eat 'grief food'. The instant 'chilli-flakes' evoked earlier are an acknowledgment of cultural compromises. Then a further unexpected move occurs: 'and from our kitchen the time-travelling smell / of chicken curry floats to Walden Pond'. There's no abruptness; the translation from the poet's garden where he now lives in the US to Thoreau's retreat is amused, peaceable, sensuous.
Choosing, as Keats chose, the subversively 11-lined stanza, Ravinthiran further complicates its balance. A clearcut, almost emphatically rhymed ABAB quatrain evolves into the looser assembly of seven lines whose rhymes may sound out less distinctly. Stanza two introduces a brilliant short film of the cardinal's swoop and the responsive movement of mosquitoes that 'eddy / like opinion.' That nicely poised, concrete-abstract simile is followed by the rather more Keatsian image of the insects 'scribbling on the air'.
Keats's poem always addresses Autumn. Who is Ravinthiran addressing with 'There is no need / to be ashamed'? The tone sounds loving, even lover-like, with its note of future expectation. But perhaps the 'you' is the poem, or the poet courting his muse? 'You' might also be the 'phantasms' who have helplessly spoken in a strange 'tongue'.
Ravinthiran's poetic 'courtship' is oblique, questioning, almost shy: 'where feelings come from or may leap / across and through and to no one can say.' Those monosyllables form little uneven stepping stones in a swashing river. After that, the picture enlarges dramatically with the tsunami of 2004, the Dravidian temple, 'the old kovil's god-thronged tower' and the defensive new-build. These lines extend history and still find it dangerous. Conflict is suggested: the sunset's clouds are 'a far-quarried rubble' and there may be no comfort in the assertion that 'the light does spicy things' to them.
Open-winged birds of possibility still circle. The conflation of truth and beauty is gently queried: the beauty of birds is mechanism, the poet says, as he hooks the reader sharply down to earth with the marriage of 'verbs' and 'barbs'. The personification of barbed wire as a narcissist fixes in a single line the worst of human nature. A tyrannical border splices the garden, its fragrances and reconciliations. Those barbs may presage a deeper colour of autumnal red.