All the Answer I Shall Ever Get

By Tanya Mendonsa

'Tanya Mendonsa's jewelled poems pull the reader into a complex fairy-tale world, not just of beauty and magic, but of blood and betrayal as well. Filled with passionate love for the natural world and its creatures, these are poems to remember.' - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Tanya Mendonsa's second collection of poems is an exploration of a meditation on two eternal themes: love and friendship, and the power of the past.In these poems are to be found passionate longing and profound loss, but this is no ordinary homage to those most celebrated of human feelings. Mendonsa's directness and simplicity are, by turns, intimate, terrifying, uplifting and, ultimately, liberating. These poems open our eyes to a world seen anew with a lyricism that never ceases to astonish and delight. 'Tanya Mendonsa's work is cosmopilitan in reference, yet deeply rooted in ... a magical corner of a storied land.'Amitav Ghosh 'Mendonsa's poetic language reminds one of the language of dreams, saying exactly what it has to say ... the ordinary becomes extraordinary.'Goa Today 'A sensuous feast ... poems that are painted with an artist's brush.'The Hindu

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins India
• Release date: Feb 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9789351777052

Tanya Mendonsa

Tanya Mendonsa was educated at Loreto school and college in Calcutta. After spending twenty years in Paris, studying French literature at the Sorbonne, painting and running a language school, she returned to India, a story told in her memoir The Book of Joshua. Her first collection of poetry, The Dreaming House, ranged effortlessly in theme, maintaining a startling clarity of vision and language. Her poems have been widely anthologized. She currently lives in the blue mountains of the Nilgiris with the abstract painter Antonio E Costa.

Book preview

PART I

Speaker: Stranger, what do you seek or ask from us?

Tamino: Friendship and love

Speaker: And are you prepared even if it costs you your life?

Tamino: I am

– from the libretto of The Magic Flute

by W.A. Mozart

Fairy Tale Reversed

All the stories tell you

not to walk in the woods

alone.

There is the wolf,

with the grandmother warm in his belly.

There is the gingerbread house,

with a cage inside, for fattening children.

There is the crone,

with the juicy, poisoned apple in her hand.

Keep to the path

and look straight ahead:

better the hard, safe stones

than the soft grass

and the enchanted river.

Ah!

But there is also the castle:

blue turrets behind blue hills

waiting for its queen.

There is also the lucky third son

you might meet around the bend

and marry, easy as cherry pie.

There is also the nightingale

made of gold and jewels,

in the grove of singing trees.

There is so much more, on the other side of the line.

Step over,

and change the colour of your eyes.

Triangle into Square

The old king’s daughter, hair unbound,

creeps back to her room without a sound.

Her eyes are stars, her mind aflame,

whispering, over and over, the name

of her mother’s lover, before she began;

now her body is stamped with the seal of this man.

One, two, drop of dew.

The queen’s far away, riding the fog,

quartering her lands like a famished dog,

collecting rents; enough to dowse

every pod of greed within her spouse.

To pour out the gold so he smiles, entranced

by the glittering coins that wink and dance.

Three, four, give me more!

The new lovers lie deep in the orchard grass:

who cares how quickly the weeks have passed?

He stains her mouth with the purple fruit;

she shuts her ears against the truth:

that the wind has carried the dreadful news

and their hours now numbered in horses’ hooves.

Five, six, pick up sticks.

She’d dreamed of him and watched, with stealth,

the games her mother played – and yet –

he’d watched her too and laid his bait;

the meat much sweeter for the wait.

The triangle now has changed its shape

to a square, with the hangman’s noose in place.

Seven, eight, make her late!

The day is ending, the wine is poured;

they enter now by separate doors:

he, she and the dumbstruck king.

They lift their glasses and they drink.

At the city gates, the drumming starts;

she is come, she is here; o stop, my heart!

Nine, ten, tell me when.

Like the Furies, the queen descends

upon the palace with her men.

Upstairs, the frozen trio sit,

eyes locked, like limbs that soon won’t fit.

The bursting door – the flashing spears –

the banshee wail – too late for tears!

Ay, now, comes the flood:

a hundred

thousand

waves of blood.

The Daughters of the Lie

Our ways are mild

but we have tigers in the blood.

We would tear the heart out of an enemy

as easily as we would break bread

or pull a lettuce.

We speak them smooth

but ice runs in our veins.

Nobody knows us,

the daughters of the lie.

At a sticking point,

the heath is as good a bed for us

as any sanctioned mattress.

With mercy to all

we have pity for none.

Although they lie with us

and stroke the sheepskin,

they never see the wolf.

The fangs and claws

are in the mind and heart,

and nobody is spared.

We have kestrel’s eyes

and our kin are the wildness and the wet.

Come, the feast is spread.

You can sate yourself on us

and never taste our truth.

Ondine*

Ocean, play the fish abacus;

shadow of my belonging

discarded on the seabed.

Seaweed, grapple down the past.

Octopus, ink it out.

I am impregnated by that old Neptune, that Father Time:

his trident pierced my vitals

and shoals of fish pour between