Two Poems by Mir Mahfuz Ali
PN Review 192, March - April 2010.
A Discovery
Muktar was his name — his tongue
still white with his mother’s milk,
and he sucked his thumb in the classroom.
Monsoon music drowned the light of day.
Our Lakeside School was surrounded by black waters.
Water-hyacinth, rice-grass and lotus covered the lake.
Tiffin time. Playground muddy.
We had nowhere to go at break, but watched
how the rain-mist dusted our eyes —
a white darkness. He led me
to the back of our school, showed me
a little fish, a poisonous snake, a toad.
We stood at the water’s edge. Rain exploded on the lake.
He took his fleshy shoot out of his pouch.
It was small as a young gherkin,
a yellow flower still attached to its head.
I laughed. He took my hand, pulled it
and asked me to touch, take the flower
with the ant that hid in its pollen.
I snatched my hand away.
He wanted to slide mine out of my blue shorts,
measure it against his.
He insisted. I refused. He insisted again,
said it was tiny and soft as a leech.
I reached into the darkness of my pants
to show him mine — it grew and went on growing in my hand.
His eyes sparkled as if he’d just seen a spikenard bloom.
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A Snake Charmer Came to Call
The other day a snake charmer came to call.
            He brought a basket full of sorrow
and left it there for me in front of our door.
            But it was empty when I found it and
he was off to catch a cobra hiding
            inside a water-pot on our rear veranda.
All known miseries yapped at his feet when
            carefully he rolled the jar over, to force the snake out.
He grabbed it firmly by its tail,
            the water-pot didn’t rotate the way the snake
charmer intended. It rolled with the mouth away
            from him, and the snake was gone in a flash,
leaving the rats of rage to roam our yards.
            The snake charmer’s patience wearing
thin as the clean-smelling cobra’s that knew
            the strength in his body and the malice of hands.
All that the snake charmer had was his
            binagini flute, so he played the note
in that place where tree-wasps dance. The tone
            could feel its way between my tongue
and heart — one was too quick and one was
            too slow, needing much blood to understand
how he might have been withered by his scorn
            for this cunning cobra that had now gone back
to its lair under the bamboo bush. The snake
            twitched in the hedge, knew the man
was looking to smash its nest.
            His spade was a gleam going into the ground
with a throb not quite matching the reptile’s.
            Now chiselling away the earth little by little.
And the snake hid under its own coil
            where every scale shone grief.
These poems by Mir Mahfuz Ali are taken from PN Review 192, March - April 2010. Two more of his poems are included in the issue, available to subscribers.