All the Answer I Shall Ever Get
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About this ebook
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
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.
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All the Answer I Shall Ever Get - Tanya Mendonsa
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