Issue 4: On greedy savouring and Kiarostami

Assorted poems and handpicked delight at your doorstep

I have been soaking poems, watching cinema that I have no urge to tell a soul about. I have been writing voraciously. Consuming greedily. Poems come to me everyday. Some I catch, some I let go. The world is just fine without them. I finished my postgraduate degree 7 months ago and started work right after that. I'm coming to terms with what it's like to have creative pursuits without intention, without direction. To love, absolutely love art, cinema, music, poetry. What beauty in sharing the love. A friendship where a friend picks films for you. One with poems. One where a playlist is gifted. God, to have an appetite that large! I am sitting in Saket, my friend S says, if Sylvia Plath was here in this room, I would love her, I would love her so much.

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Do you like flowers? I like flowers. Do you like poems?

To bring you poems is like taking a walk in the neighbourhood at early dawn, walking on misty grass, to pick flowers hanging by the balconies of other people’s homes, and wildflowers from the fence. These are the poems I tasted, enjoyed, and love. You are welcome.

Missed Time by Ha Jin

To be so happy that I write bad poems. Yes, please.

My notebook has remained blank for months
thanks to the light you shower
around me. I have no use
for my pen, which lies
languorously without grief.

Nothing is better than to live
a storyless life that needs
no writing for meaning—
when I am gone, let others say
they lost a happy man,
though no one can tell how happy I was.

World by Carol Ann Duffy

The beauty of this poem is so tangible that I can feel it on my tongue, it tastes like blood but in a raspberry way.

On the other side of the world,
you pass the moon to me,
like a loving cup,
or a quaich.
I roll you the sun.

I go to bed,
as you’re getting up
on the other side of the world.
You have scattered the stars
towards me here, like seeds

in the earth.
All through the night,
I have sent you
bunches, bouquets, of cloud
to the other side of the world;

so my love will be shade
where you are,
and yours,
as I turn in my sleep,
the bud of a star.

The Mower by Philip Larkin

Does it remind you of the spider and kindness poem?

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found   
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,   
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.   
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world   
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence   
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind   
While there is still time.

Yes, That’s When by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

This is a prayer.

I like my body when I’m in the woods
and I forget my body. I forget that arms,
that legs, that nose. I forget that waist,
that nerve, that skin. And I aspen. I mountain.
I river. I stone. I leaf. I path. I flower.
I like when I evergreen, current and berry.
I like when I mushroom, avalanche, cliff.
And everything is yes then, and everything
new: wild iris, duff, waterfall, dew.

And God,
please let the deer
on the highway
get some kind of heaven.
Something with tall soft grass
and sweet reunion.
Let the moths in porch lights
go some place
with a thousand suns,
that taste like sugar
and get swallowed whole.
May the mice
in oil and glue
have forever dry, warm fur
and full bellies.
If I am killed
for simply living,
let death be kinder
than man.

-Anthea Davis

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I woke up with a hungry urge to watch Kiarostami

One of these days, I woke up with one thought, I need to watch Kiarostami. I spent hours in my room watching film after film. Savouring, absorbing, mourning.

Where is the Friend’s House? (1987)

Ahmed and Nematzadeh rode on my heart.

It's one of the most beautiful depictions I have seen of a child’s world, the anxieties of being invisible in an adult world. The cinematography is so ingenious, so clever, and so playful. Kiarostami's viewer is a curious viewer. He will force you to be if you're not. You are watching Ahmed. You watch Ahmed repeat the same sentence 6 times to his mother. Little Ahmed and his little heart.

Ahmed and Nematzadeh rode on my heart.

Life Goes On (1992)

Watching Kiarostami is like living with the characters. It's not romantic. Sometimes it's actually very annoying. And boring. And dull..but that just reminds you that life is exactly like that. Kiarostami does magic, but he does not create that magic. It's not like he is breaking the fourth wall and the character winks at you. The characters go on with their lives. The characters engage in dull and interesting conversations. They get tired. They walk. They ride. Unlike any other movie that makes me cry. Or breaks me, Kiarostami just tickles my heart, expands it, and remains like a smoke tar in my heart. A spot in the lung.

“My eyes are watchful of life itself, and my senses are focussed on my environment, I could say without a doubt, it is the experience of living and what goes on around me and not the cinema nor literature that is most influential”
-Abbas Kiarostami

Close Up (1990)

Certified Copy (2010)

Taste of Cherry (1997)

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Misunderstood for love

one must know the

movements of your mouth

to love you.

I only know

the unwritten words

between parentheses.