Eunuch

I

It was astonishing, Mahatma, the way

you brought home our prehistory,

when you came into our fretful midst

with your gospel of survival—

singing hermaphroditic non-violence, and

resisting aggression with womanly fasts.

Before you we had lived our epics, too, but

by seeking an eye for an eye, and

stone for stone. The idols had been our last

weapons during violent times.

We had been warriors heedless of amity,

till your motherly prayers tempered our times.

Bare visionary, you reminded us

of our lost art of bonding without merging:

Never doubting the meaning of borders,

our princes in exile had donned the double guise;

in our palaces, man had turned woman1, and

in our forests, woman into man2;

we knew how the transvestite covered one best

against indomitable warriors3; and

our eunuchs were fertile: elegantly poised

on pillars between the human and divine.

Thus your spinning joined all–memory and dream,

man and woman, journey and destination. 

Effeminate dictator, now we see,

you were our last ardhanareeswara4.

Our symbols had cunningly called you father.

II

Mahatma, pardon those who stilled your body

to freeze you in manhood.

After you, the eunuch

has remained in fragments:

implanted breast, uneven voice, evening stubble

above a sari of autumnal gold, a revealing act

Now, we are a castrated age – neither here

nor there –

powerless either to bless or to curse,

yet clapping aloud in the streets.

Poetry Reading

Let us look into each other’s eyes

before the sun goes down.

We are bonded in learning;

nothing on our way should embarrass us,

neither our passion

nor our ignorance.

We shall learn to hold our breath

as trees do in the summer noon,

and prepare

for ripeness.

Soon a prayerful half-moon

will set the lake glowing for a while,

and then vanish.

So we shall train our eyes

first to the sieved light and shadow play,

then to the cold enveloping night.

We shall ask our ears, first,

to listen to the shattered sky,

then, to our own hearts.

Or, we might not be ready

when poetry emerges again,

eyes wide open on the dark,

and trembling all over

in silence;

in sheer silence.

- Dr.Rizio Yohannan Raj