On reading the photos of Rajendra Chitrakar
By Wayne Amtzis

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On September 9, 1993, three photos by the journalist Rajendra Chitrakar appeared in The Rising Nepal.  The images are common enough—a woman learning to read, garbage piled in a public place, a boy flying his kite—and surfacing as they did on separate pages they can be seen as stereotypes.  Taken together, however, they represent a succinct photo essay of social conditions and attitudes in Nepal.  In March, 1994, two other photos of Rajendra’s, ones that capture women and girls doing physical labor normally consigned to men, were published in The Rising Nepal.  A close reading of these two groups of photos, these five images, shows that photography can be used in Nepal as a language of clarification and social commentary against which the more flagrantly abused spoken and written languages can be measured.  As of now, like many photographs that appear in the press, they are merely buoys, markers, in a turbulent sea of words.

Consider the first group of photos.  We see prominently placed on the front page of the newspaper a sari-clad woman sitting cross-legged on a mat.  A kerosene lantern in the foreground casts light on the notebook where she writes.  Behind her are rows of women and girls, who, we learn, are also “Chitwan women participating in the adult literacy program”.

Reassured by the caption NEVER TOO OLD TO LEARN, we turn the page and see garbage spread out in the grass and grass overgrown pavement in front of Kathmandu District Court and garbage overflowing a garbage bin in front of the Court.  Beneath tall white pillars ringed with dirt and in front of the walls flecked with peeling paint, a few people pass unnoticed along the dark weatherworn corridor that rings the building.  The caption reads: GIVE THEM JUSTICE.

On the back page, a young boy, casting his shadow across a path, guides a kite in the air above eroded and terraced fields; low clouds hang in the sky touching the surrounding hills, an outcrop of city buildings encroach on the fields in the distance.  The caption, innocently enough states BLOWING IN THE WIND.

How are we to look at these photos?  In the photo of the sari-clad student our attention turns, as she does, down to the notebook where she writes; in the photo of the Court our eyes skip across the sea of garbage looking for a resting place, only to confront the darkened entrance, the once proud columns and the wooden railing of the second floor framing us in; in the photo of the boy reigning in his kite our eyes ride with the wind from the far left-hand corner where he stands to the far right where the kite rises, taking us beyond the eroded path and terraced fields towards a city shadowed by a darkened sky.

The thin pencil in the hand that writes, the unseen kite string alternatively loose and taut, and the columns, balustrade and rails of the court announce their human intent in different registers.  A settled determination shines on the forehead and face of the woman set to her task.  The sure eyes and hands of the boy cannot long conceal the elation we know rises from within as the kite is drawn by the winds.  Yet how does the petitioner pass where foul odors reek?  Are the once lordly columns there only to raise Justice above an encroaching sea of refuse?  Here near the apogee of civilized tasks we detect decay, unconcern—human failure.

In the first of the photos that focus on women doing physical labor (March 13, 1994), a man and a woman are pushing a two-wheeled flatbed cart down New Road.  The sari-clad woman bends to her labor, her arm stiff against the sideboard, her eyes cast down, her mouth open, breathing, gasping.  Buildings stucco-ed with signs and long lines of people three abreast clogging the railed-in sidewalk provide the backdrop for the photo.  Loaded with crates and burlap and plastic bags filled with goods the cart seems stopped in its tracks as if the man and woman were wedded to an immovable burden, but this is only an illusion.  Traffic moves in the opposite direction and these workhorses moving towards us seem even to outdistance the jeep falling behind them in the distance.

In the second photo, (March 25, 1994): two girls in Dulikhel; their heads bear the weight of wicker baskets half-full (for they are young) with bricks; paired as if dancing a duet, their lead feet, one right, the other left, bare and flat on the ground; their back feet, one left, the other right, bent at the toes springing forward.  They must be aware their picture is being taken, for the lead girl has averted her eyes and the other is smiling.  Their backs and heads are bent forward—how could they rise against their burden to look the camera in the eye?  In the background, other laborers (one surely a woman, for she wears a sari and her basket is full) leave the long fallen wall of bricks in measured sequence.

In March, when these photos appeared, the 84^th International Woman's Day had just passed, so surely Rajendra was directed toward marking the status of women in Nepal.  Physical labor unites the woman on New Road with her sisters in Dulikhel; the only difference besides age is that she wears cheap thongs on her feet while theirs are bare.  And what of the woman in Chitwan learning to read and write?  Her sari is lovely; jewelry adorns nose, ears, neck and wrist; her arms are tattooed with lines and circles as beautiful as those of a peacock.  She seems relaxed, yet she too is laboring.  Behind her, other women bend to their books in the half-light and some stare ahead, young girls, who, perhaps already, despite their efforts to learn, know what the future will bring.

On New Road, although we can barely see him, a man bends as the woman does, straining to push cart and goods.  It is the woman, however, who is highlighted in the photo; the man’s labor is accepted as a given.  Thus, only the boy is free.  Momentarily.  The eroded fields on the outskirts of the city are his realm of freedom, but the sky overhead is dark, the two and three story houses, though half-built, are clearly defined.  Young girls have been enlisted to haul the bricks.  Will they raise-up buildings as grand as the Kathmandu District Court?  What we don’t see at the Court midst the garbage and stately columns are the petitioners, the lawyers and judges, those who dispense or dispense with justice.  The workings of the Law are hidden from us here.  We see no striving nor labor in measured sequence.  What we note is the absence of human endeavor, so apparent in the other photos.

In this series we are not confronted with the usual imprint of photo-journalism, the images of newsmakers whose faces and voices collide on the front pages of the daily press.  Nor are we subjected to the facile images that crowd the postcard racks belying the situation of a country and its people.  Moreover, although Rajendra works with an awareness of form, it is the content of the photos—the individuals, their actions and the situations depicted—that bears the weight of the message conveyed.

What is it then that gives meaning to what we see in these five photos?  Is it that the situations rendered are clarified in the interplay of images or do the inner striving of the protagonists call forth our recognition and empathy?  Take the photo of the young girls hauling bricks and lay it beside those of the boy flying his kite and the woman writing in their notebook by the light of the lantern.  Or better yet, take the baskets and bricks and lay them beside the book and pencil and the kite and string.  Reader, which ones would you choose?  The momentary freedom of the kite, the long apprenticeship of the pen or the debilitating bondage of the doko and bricks?  But you say, the bricks must be hauled, the wind will whisk the kite from the boy’s hand and the light on the book dims.

The people seen here do not have these choices.  Glancing at the man and woman wedded to their labor and at the Court in disrepair, I recognize that the ethos does not allow it.  The photos show us what is, not what will be. For that I must admit I can only respond with a final allusive reading of the photos.
 

Newspaper photographs to teach writing
by Wayne Amtzis

Having taught writing to English language learners for many years I have come to the conclusion that the most involvement and progress come when familiar local situations, contexts, and materials are used.  At the highest levels this pertains to work being done on the job or at the campus in which the students are actively involved.  For students gaining and then utilizing the most basic skills, familiar contexts and situations allow for easier communication and deeper student involvement.  Today I would like to focus on one simple approach to writing that is useful for students who have acquired some basic writing skills and are ready to utilize them to consolidate and expand their expressive and communicative abilities. 

            To prepare for this lesson the teacher need only look through the various locally available newspapers and magazines.  The photographs that appear in them provide the context and focus for the approach I am suggesting.  In the course of a few weeks the teacher can gather at little cost a supply of different photos (other than political leaders and sports contestants) that refer to local situations and to individuals and the lives they lead.  The plethora of postcards of Nepali scenes and people for sale locally tend to romanticize and present a uniform unrealistic picture of Nepal and its people and therefore are not useful here.  Students should also be asked to go through the newspapers and magazines they and their families read and to gather photos that appeal to them. 

            The first task would simply be for the students to decide, preferably working in groups, which photos—which people or scenes depicted—they want to write about.  However, the first time the writing lesson is taught, the teacher may want to choose one photo for the entire class to write about.  I have often done this with a photo that I have taken of a man carrying a ‘kharpan’ full of eggs to the market.  I will use it here to characterize the approach a teacher could take in the classroom. 

            Who is this man?  What is he doing?  Where is he going?  These questions are useful guidelines for writing third person descriptions.  Descriptions written by students as observers can then provide a basis for first person narrations.  Narrative accounts in the first person singular allow students to present the farmer’s thoughts.  What are you (as farmer or porter) thinking about on the way to the market?  Profit?  Purchases?  The weight and fragility of your load?  Your family and their needs?

            Once the students have developed a basic description of the farmer and his concerns, the teacher can introduce a title or first line that will evoke a theme.  In this instance I chose “Broken Eggs” as the title.  Students should consider what such a title would indicate.  What would such a story be about?  What would happen?  An accident on the way to the market?  What kind of accident?  How did it happen? 

            When students are ready to write a story (in the first person singular), the teacher should ask that they consider and convey the farmer’s thoughts as he was walking to the market or his emotions immediately after the accident.  Was there any relationship between his thoughts and the accident?  Was he already counting his profits, or worrying about his family, and because of this daydreaming did his trip on a stone? 

            This allows students to introduce themes other than the one relating to the accident.  One question often raised about the man is:  “Is he rich or poor?”  Depending on how the students answer that question, their stories will differ.  If a student decides the “eggman” is rich, then he is depicted as thinking about his wealth on the way to the market.  If he is seen as poor, then he will be weighed down by concern for his family.  Both men are lost in thought.  Both have an accident because they are daydreaming. 

            In discussing their writing, the students usually agree that the rich man has a character fault and the poor man is a victim of circumstances.  Thus, in this simple writing lesson the students create stories that are sometimes “comic” or sometimes “tragic”.  The combination of familiar character and setting and a simple story line makes this an enjoyable and rewarding writing lesson for both teacher and students. 

           
The following two (corrected) versions of the story “Broken Eggs” were written by students:

            Story 1.  I am a poultry man.  Yesterday morning I was going to the market to sell eggs.  I had a lot of eggs in my kharpan.  The kharpan was over my shoulder.  I was thinking about my family.  “If I sell all these eggs, I can buy new clothes for my son, my daughter, and my wife.  They don’t have any new clothes.”  At that time, I was not paying attention to the street and I tripped over a stone.  As a result, all my eggs were broken.  Now I am worried about my family.  “How can I give them new clothes?  I don’t have money to buy new clothes.” 

            Story 2.  I am a farmer.  Four months ago I bought some chickens.  Now they are large hens and have begun to give eggs.  Yesterday I went to the market to sell eggs.  I carried those eggs in a basket called a kharpan.  I was very happy because it was the first time I was going to sell the eggs of the hens that I had raised.  I was filled with joy, the happiness that arises when one see the fulfillment of desire. 

            At that time I was walking down the road towards the market thinking about the past days when they were still chickens and how hard it was to raise them.  Then suddenly I heard a crash and felt my shoulder lighten.  The basket had slipped and the eggs had fallen.  “Oh No!”  I should have tied the knot more carefully.  How absent-minded I had been!  All the eggs were broken!  I began to search through the fallen eggs.  Were there any left?  “Yes!”  The basket had fallen on the grass.  It was a warning, not a punishment.  I thanked the god and promised to be more careful in the days ahead.

            Once the teacher has introduced the process of writing from a photograph, the student can on their own or in groups write descriptions, narratives of events and stories drawn from the photos they have gathered.  Or they can take their own photos.  One needn’t have a camera to do this.  Photos isolate individuals from their surroundings or depict scenes that we may not have noticed as we walk through the city or village.  Students like writers anywhere can learn to observe the outside world.  These “snapshots” taken by the mind can provide the basis for writing that the students do on their own.  It is a way of bringing the outside world into the classroom and allowing the students choice in the content of their writing lessons. 

            I’d like to conclude with the following (corrected) paragraph written by a student who was asked to isolate and observe a person or scene and write about it. 

            I’m an old shoemaker sitting in the shade of a tree on New Road.  I am from a village in western Nepal.  I’ve been working here for 6 years.  I work all day in every season and earn about 50 rupees per day.  I’m well known throughout the city by the name of Golchee Sarkie, the shoemaker, because I was a defeated candidate for the mayor of Kathmandu in the last election.  Now I’m dealing with one of my customers at my own work place.  However, I’m going to fight once again the General Election, this time for the post of Member of Parliament.  Remember my name, Golchee Sarkie, the shoemaker. 

            From the work done in the classroom the student had learned to describe what he saw, to speak in the first person singular as if he were the person he is writing about, and finally to include perceptions that he, the student, brought to the writing.  It is the use of familiar and the commonplace that allowed this student to write so readily, so simple and so well.

The American poets, Raymond Carver, Phillip Levine, and Ai utilize a narrative voice that is strongly descriptive. The poems I am considering here: "Wes Hardin: From A Photograph" by Raymond Carver; "On The Murder of Lieutenant Jose Del Castillo By Falangist Bravo Martinez, July 12, 1936," by Phillip Levine, and "Interview With A Policeman," by Ai, all describe executions. Wes Hardin was an outlaw in the American West brought down by gunmen; Jose Del Castillo, a lieutenant in the National Guard of the Republican government of Spain killed by a Fascist opponent of the government. The victim in Ai's poems, a young black man caught robbing a liquor store, remains nameless, as does the policeman who shot him.

The poets themselves have not witnessed the executions. To structure their poems, Carver relies on a photograph; Levine, on the eyes of a street hawker, and Ai on a television interview. Levine takes an omniscient third person perspective that allows him to describe the attack on Jose Del Castillo as well as Castillo's death experience, while Ai speaks with the immediacy of the first person, with the voice and perspective of the policeman. Carver too uses a first person narrative, but the poet narrates and his perceptions form an integral part of the poem.

The three poets also differ in their attitudes towards the events described. Carver does no more than describe and recognize that which has drawn him to the photos; Levine makes himself witness the murder out of unmentioned solidarity with the victim and his cause, while remaining aware of the limits of the authenticity of his empathy; Ai narrates from within, through the voice of the executioner, yet she makes explicit the complicity of those directly involved in the killing.

These differences in attitude are characteristic for each poet and reflect a difference in stance and personal voice that is common throughout the larger body of their work. Carver writes only of his own experience; Levine is drawn to the victim with the need to tell the victim's story; Ai, on the other hand, deals not so much with the immediate victim, but with the energy of violence itself, and it's the perpetrator of violence whose voice she often renders in her poems.

Wes Hardin: From A Photograph

Carver begins by telling us that "turning through a collection of old photographs" he comes "to the picture of the outlaw, Wes Hardin, dead." He has come upon Wes Hardin by chance, perhaps, in a moment of distraction. Why didn't a photograph of two lovers on a bench in the Tulleries catch his eyes, or a soot-faced boy emerging from a West Virginia coal mine? Yet the description that follows is in such detail: "the bruised face, " "the bullet hole above his right eye" that Carver's role in Wes Hardin's life becomes clear. Is he not like the undertaker called to lay Hardin out for his funeral?

Thus a solemn voice intrudes into the proceedings: "nothing so funny about that, " nothing so funny about "a big mustached man, in a black suit coat, lying on his back over a board floor in Amarillo, Texas." For we can see a "bullet has entered his skull from behind." Noting this, Carver turns to the "shabby men in overalls who stand grinning a few feet away." Doesn't he see that they are smiling for the camera? Even the dead man has his head turned that way.

Carver's sympathies have been aroused. In moving from foreground to background and back again, Carver compares Wes Hardin with his executioners. It's not just that they are shabbily dressed; they are "shabby men," holding rifles and the outlaw's hat like hunters posing with the animal they've snared. At their feet a man lies riddled with bullets. A man wearing a fancy white shirt, "in a manner of speaking," Carver says.

He too having joked at the dead man's expense, Carver tells us "what makes me stare is this large dark bullet hole through the slender, delicate looking right hand." The contrast with the executioners is complete. (The outlaw at least dressed for the funeral.) Wes Hardin, a big man, by his own reputation larger than life, offers in his final moment a hand drawn by El Greco. And Carver turning through a collection of old photographs stops, and stares, and it is into the large dark bullet hole in the outlaw's, that gunman's hand that he is drawn.

With Carver we have the photos, and though we can see the basis for his interest in his exact and contrasting characterizations of the killer and the killed, we are left only with Carver's curiosity and the poem in place of the photo, itself a curiosity. It is a post mortem. For the execution we must turn to Levine.

On The Murder of Lieutenant Jose Del Castillo By Falangist Bravo Martinez, July 12, 1936

The lieutenant hears the first shot and we turn with him to see his assailant. Three more shots tear him from his comrade's arms and then we lose count. As he slides towards the gray cement of the Ramblas in Barcelona, Levine with swift strokes paints Castillo's death experience and the surroundings of the wide street closing in. Now we are truly in an El Greco painting: "the blue sky smudged with clouds," "his eyes filling with their own light." The counterpoint continues: "the pigeons that have spotted the cold floor of Barcelona rose and sank below the silent waves crashing on the far shore of his legs, growing faint and watery." This is the weakest imagery and the weakest moment in the poem, but it is redeemed when the lieutenant "who knew only that he wound not die," when his hands opened a last time to receive the benedictions of automobile exhaust and rain and the rain of soot."

Levine is portraying the death of a man, of a soldier who like any man is vulnerable: "His mouth that would never again say I am afraid closed on nothing." The old grandfather hawking flowers quickly mourns and turns away "before he held the eyes of the gunmen." Silenced, but "the shepherd dogs on sale in their cages howled and turned in circles." Their rage cannot be contained. And for Levine "There is more to be said." Astonishingly, not judgment for the murder committed, but "prayer that comes on the voices of water" "and hangs like smoke above this street he won't walk as a man ever again."

The title of the poem proclaims Levine's judgment. He has not chosen to depict just any murder. We know that Spanish Republic was as vulnerable as Jose Del Castillo. This is what Levine wants us to see. Describing the lieutenant's assassination and his inner transformation, Levine realizes that he cannot say what needs to be said. The voice that needs to be heard, and is heard, can only be the voice of "someone who has suffered and died for his sister, the earth, and his brothers, the beasts and trees." So the lieutenant who entered our consciousness with a gunshot leaves us hearing that benediction. We are left with his life lost and that prayer.

The lieutenant walks the streets of Barcelona as a protector of the Spanish Republic. We are made aware that he is a vulnerable man who can say I am afraid, a courageous man who will turn to face his assailant, but Bravo Martinez we never see. Only through the shots that tear through Del Castillo's body and the verdict of the title do we know of him. For the killer and his confession we must turn to Ai.

Interview With A Policeman

Where Carver's voice is noncommittal, Levine's is passionate and Ai's is defiant. Carver stares, but not at death; it is a bullet hole in a man's hand he sees. Levine offers us the look and feel of death to the man who does not believe, and prayer is born in desperation, but it is not the voice of blood that we hear. Ai speaks with the voice that encounters and brings death in its wake. Whether the crime is sanctioned or not, the killer is marked by his victim's blood: "when I stared at him, a cough or spasm sent a stream of blood out of his mouth that hit me in the face."

Carver and Levine describe exactly what they see. The Wes Hardin Carver gives us is the Wes Hardin of a photograph. Carver attempts no more than his title indicates. Levine gives us Jose Del Castillo in flesh and spirit; the poem itself becomes a document to be admitted in evidence not only for the murder but also for the soul's accounting. In Ai's account of a television interview, the policeman will not be a scapegoat. The story can't be told without rage. "You say you want this story in my own words, but you won't tell it my way. Reporters never do." The external details interest them, not the soul's accounting, unless to condemn the policeman (an exculpate themselves) for his act.

In Levine's account the man hawking flowers on the Ramblas turns from the murder he witnesses. He shields himself from the murderer and the violent force he represents. Ai makes the need to witness killing ("You say you want this story in my own words") and the inability to take responsibility for it ("underneath it all, just like me, you want to forget him") a central theme of her poem.

Carver constructs his poem by drawing contrasts between Wes Hardin and his killers and by admitting to his need to perceive and describe. Levine's poem draws its dramatic intensity from the counterpoint of internal and external action and by admitting to and overcoming his own inability to witness these events. The killing of the armed robber in Ai's poem resonates with the off duty policeman's necessary rage and the accusation born of that rage, and with the recognition as the camera and tape are turned off that the policeman's fear and hate are the interviewer's own. The denouement is in Ai's voice, though spoken by the policeman as he sends the "boy like a shark redeemed at last yet unrepentant" to renter our lives by the "unlocked door of sleep." Carver shares his perceptions with the reader; Levine asks us to partake of his vision, to take on his hope; Ai renders us guilty by her accusation. All three rely on exact description of action to accomplish their aims.

These poems move with the clarity and rapidity of prose; the poet's voice like a rudder coursing the narrative in a certain direction: Carver's being aesthetic; Levine's, historical and spiritual; Ai's psychological and social. In their own way each bares witness to killing and recognizes the inability of their prose-like lines to account for death: Carver by what he does not attempt, Levine by recourse to metaphor that wills belief. Ai, however, does not question the poet's voice as witness; she calls to account the reporter, the TV camera, and a society that relies on the media to form its social consciousness and the police to save it from the violence that lurks in its streets. The policeman and "the black kid who pulled the gun at the wrong time" are nameless because endemic. On the Ramblas in Barcelona "the old grandfather hawking daises" "turned his eyes away before he held the eyes of the gunman." Murder and averted eyes brought dictatorship, but what does killing and a need to look into the face of violence as if it were not one's own bring? Not a photo, nor a TV clip, nor a scene from a movie, but a negative washed in the waters of dream, a recognition that can't be shunned, a shark whose outline is etched by fear.

Literary Studies #14, March 95
Annual Conference of the Literary Association of Nepal, March 1994

SEMANTICS/POETICS

THE MIRRORED SELF -- READING THE READER'S RESPONSE
by Wayne Amtzis

1. Introduction

In this paper I will present an original poem, THE HOURGLASS, and three reader responses to that poem (by the critic and poet Abhi Subedi, the short story writer and poet Manju Kanchuli, and the poet Manjul). I will look at the poem from the perspectives they provide and consider the nature and bases of their particular responses. Then I will offer my own (privileged) reading of HOURGLASS, examining the nature and basis for that response as well. In the course of this presentation I will discuss the significance of the words and images used and the relationship of the title to the poem.

Abhi Subedi and Manjul responded within the context of their relationship with me and their previous reading of my poems. Manju Kanchuli, although familiar with my writing, took an impersonal approach, one assuming no prior knowledge of the poet or his work. For Abhi, HOURGLASS capsulizes my "poetic response to the Nepali milieu." For Manjul it represents a characteristic mode of writing, that of "painting ideas in words." For Manju Kanchuli the poem stands before the poet, but it reveals him -- "in his inner and outer worlds." All three recognize "the man in the painting," "the lovers," and "the workers" as motifs that form the body of "THE HOURGLASS." All three identify snow and snow falling as a key image. Yet what they make of the interplay of these motifs and images varies as does the tone and direction of their readings.

For Abhi and for Manju Kanchuli HOURGLASS is a poem of "time and experience"; for Manjul the central motif is that of the interplay of consciousness and death. Abhi's approach is structural; Manju Kanchuli's psychoanalytic; and Manjul's symbolic.

2. The Psychoanalytic Reading Style of Manju Kanchuli

Within the distance set by an impersonal vantage point, Manju Kanchuli considers the poet as well as the poem. The hourglass is seen by her as "a symbol of the organ for libidinal instinct and its subconscious innate desire." According to the psychoanalytical interpretation she proposes "the poem represents the interplay of Id (man and woman entwined) Ego (these words I seem so fond of) and Superego (turns and turns and turns). The image of snow falling is identified as " a memory of childhood and youth" and "the word freezing," she asserts "signifies unhappiness felt at the present time." However, she goes on to say that the dominant mood in the poem is that of empathy and equilibrium maintained by a philosophical stance and the logical interplay of images carrying the poem towards its resolution.

"As a poet" herself, Manju Kanchuli says she "was trying to find 'the poet' in the poem directly, since it has been my personal desire to feel the poet's nerves through his written words. I could catch the innate feelings of the poet in my apprehension nowhere so explicitly as in the following lines:

"till snowballing
like these words I seem so fond of
till freezing"

Yet Ms Kanchuli does not tell us what she makes of these lines. She does tell us that the poet uses language to make his way in the world and specifically in this poem to come to terms with the "urge that something happen," and of course it does, quite logically, as she has pointed out: "The images lead in a certain direction from beginning to end" where "the poet shifts from a physical (lover's copulate) to a metaphysical (turn and turn and turn)," "ending in an anticlimactic falling tone and philosophic mood." The conflict she identifies between "a materialistic voluptuousness (the lovers turn in their sleep)" and "a spiritual omnipotence (the buddha himself raises his hand)" resolved by the acceptance of time's inexorable workings.

"Like a genuine poet" she says "he aspires for nothing in this materialistic world except "words' as his own entity," meaning, I suppose, embodiment. With words mediating the poet's encounter with the world, "adding life to time," and interpreting inner feelings. However, she does not tend to the words and phrasing of the poem as Freud would, nor does she identify the id as a working force within the evolving poem. Although a psychoanalytic approach is introduced, it is not used as a tool for laying bare the poem's hidden workings or the poet's submerged feelings. Instead of a poet, a man with a particular dilemma and an idiosyncratic way of resolving it, the reader is left with the universal idea of poet -- one that readily fits into a Freudian typology.

3. Abhi Subedi's "Structures Of Conciousness"

Abhi Subedi sees THE HOURGLASS as "a structure of consciousness," as structuring his consciousness and as "a description of a complex painting." The primary datum of the poem are "scenes," "mobility," and "drama." The human action complemented by the movement of the snow and the hourglass provide a "kinesis," a mobility which he compares to "the movement of the visible and invisible lines of a painting," with "color being the sound of the words in motion."

Abhi reads the poem as if he were viewing a painting. Running our eyes over the surface with him, we feel the movement of words. The words, it seems, do not move referentially towards an outer world identified by the poet, but inferentially towards an inner experience had by the reader. A comparison is made not by what the lines of the poem point to, but what they are like, a comparison through resemblance based on form, not through a leap based on content. It's true, words read this way don't stand forth like stones one can leap to and from; they float with the current. They are more like barges carrying cargo. That the cargo is meaning is unimportant. What matters is movement itself; not the cargo, but the transport. For how would we value the cargo? The barges, or the high speed boats they've become, nosing in and out -- see how they veer, how they change lanes, the oil trailing blends with the dark waters and frothing waves. Thus the poem is a painting, the letters, brushstrokes quickly drawn distorting and almost concealing the figures sinking within.

Having isolated the structure of the poem and its interrelated motifs and having codified them under "scenes" and "drama," all under "the interplay of time and experience," Abhi, tending not to the semantics of these relationships, nor to the unfolding of the drama, resolves his reading through the simile of painting. The experience described is primarily aesthetic. Abhi makes no attempt to enter into world of the poem itself, to unravel the drama that he identifies. What is potentially a parable of time, has become an enigma of space. The structural analysis he initiated provides the potential for appreciating and for deciphering the poem. Caught up in the kinesis of his own response, Abhi fails to feel the chill, the slowing down (of time) beneath the piling up (of words) that stands momentarily still with the climactic word 'freezing." Where words do not mean, but simply function as aesthetic impulses, the poem hangs as a perpetuum mobile in an idealist's sky.

4. The Aesthetic Idealism of Manju Kanchuli and Abhi Subedi

Abhi finds motion essential, yet he fails to see that motion itself is at stake within the poem. Manju Kanchuli sees the poet as embodying himself and giving meaning to time through words, yet she fails to register the poet's attitude toward the process of writing itself.

snow rises from the floor
piles up

at the feet of the workers
piles up like a mountain that cannot be seen
till too late

till snowballing
like these words I seem so fond of
till freezing

unless

The poet is the fourth force within THE HOURGLASS, as his language is its unspoken motif, but the liberating acts (hoped for/anticipated) are embodied acts, physical not verbal, and their embodiment lies outside the poem as acts not words. For both Abhi and Manju Kanchuli the words of the poem do not point towards the world and action in the world, but towards the poem and the creative act. Both Abhi and Manju Kanchuli fail to register the judgment the poet renders against the blinding and inhibiting force of the language he uses and against the constraint of time marked by that language because they have idealized the creative process and its expression. Abhi experiences the poem as an object of art; Manju, the poet as artist. That idealization is a turning away from meaning, a blind spot in their reading.

5. Word and Symbol - Manjul's Reading

Only Manjul clearly recognizes what is at stake in the poem, and he does this by simply following and clarifying the narrative line to himself, and by rendering a personal judgment as to the meaning of the word "snow." For Manjul snow represents death. "If the workers will not stamp their feet, if the lovers will not copulate, if the hourglass will not shatter, or if it is not turned again and again, if there is no action there will be the reign of snow and that means there will be death everywhere." In THE HOURGLASS snow reigns, it becomes the given, and unless action is taken, time will stop for the protagonists, or it will repeat itself, always and forever offering the same choices for breaking free. His finger on the pulse of the poem, the prescription Manjul offers is consciousness. Consciousness, not overwhelming drives or sudden decisive action, stands against death. Moreover, he says "if there is consciousness even the painting will change shape." The form of the painting on the wall depends on consciousness. What the poem offers Manjul is a bipolarization of death-in-life, or fate, and consciousness capable of any possible transformation. Manjul's faith in the power of consciousness seems far greater than that of the author of THE HOURGLASS. Although the poem changed shape as I wrote it, the world remained as it was. As it is. Doesn't it?

6. The Author's Reading

Let's look at THE HOURGLASS as Manjul did, at the separate scenes depicted within, at the protagonists, at the writer, and the words he uses, to answer this question.

The title tells us that a device for telling time bears some relationship to the poem. The first sentence, the first stanza:

The painting on the wall
above the man and woman entwined
changes shape

within their consciousness

tells us that a man and woman lie together in a room; and though they are not looking at the painting on the wall above them (perhaps they are asleep or otherwise involved), the painting is tangential to them, it's fixed in their minds, it's changing shape there.

The workers slumped
against the statue of the fourfaced buddha
lean on each other

Shirts torn at the elbow,
streaked with dirt The buddha's forehead
on all four sides

smeared with vermilion

Although no apparent relationship exists between the man and woman in the room and the workers on the street, the scenes are depicted in a similar way. The man and woman and the workers among themselves are in physical contact. The painting and the fourfaced buddha stand in counterpoint to them.

Rain falls on the street striking
the window striking the lovers deep within
In the hourglass it's day or night

depending on the hands that hold it
Hands of the workers Hands of the lovers
From the ceiling of the hourglass

Against the muted action of a painting impressing itself on the man and woman, and that of the workers leaning on each other, rain falls. The workers feel this rain directly; the lovers deep within themselves. The street scene and the room now linked by the rain, are linked as well by the hourglass. The time and place depicted or experienced depends upon who holds the hourglass, and thus, by implication, the lovers and workers may have some say in the working out of their fate.

The closing lines of each three line stanza are incomplete sentences, leading to the next stanza for a resolution of meaning. If the hourglass were in our hands we would need turn it to see...

snow falls. Inhaling warmth
as they draw closer
to each other, inhaling exhaust...

In the way that the gestures of the man in the painting change shape within the consciousness of the lovers, the rain that falls outside falls as snow within the hourglass. In the room and the street that can now be seen as separate compartments of the hourglass, our protagonists draw closer to each other. The lovers are comforted, the workers suffering increases.

the man in the painting
a buddha himself, raises his hands in gestures
clear to one who wakes

The painting is for the first time described; it is of a buddha. In both scenes, in each compartment of the hourglass, there is a figure of a buddha. Enlivened he raises his hands in gestures that can be seen by one who is awake.

But the lovers turn in their sleep
Snow rises from the floor
piles up

at the feet of the workers
piles up like a mountain that cannot be seen
till too late

The buddha's gestures are not seen by the lovers. Snow piles up on the floor and on the street. Piles up as sand would in an hourglass, till too late, for without being noticed time has run out.

till snowballing
like these words I seem so fond of
till freezing

Here the poet explicitly enters the poem. The already written words that he seems so fond of have piled up unnoticed like sand in an hourglass, like a ball of snow gathering momentum, and freezing as they fall, the snow freezing, the words that overran the writer running out. The cold clarity of the words freezing these images in place. The contradiction within language as it is used, within life as it is lived, of movement and stasis, stated but left unresolved till the next stanzas turnings.

unless the workers
stamp their feet
or the lovers copulate

or the hourglass
shatters, or simply held
in the hand of the man in the painting

turns and turns and turns

The action of the poem has come to a standstill. In an hourglass sand falls marking time. In the poem rain falls initiating action. The lovers and the workers drew closer to each other. Inhaling the warmth of their concern and the exhaust of the world's unconcern, inhaling with them, the man in the painting speaks with his hands. These gestures are futile. The lovers sleep, the workers cannot see till too late what confronts them. The writer too fond of his words is carried away, or struck dumb.

There are three ways to break through this stasis depending upon who holds the hourglass, and a fourth moving with the flow of the poem that overrides it. Sudden forceful action, sudden wakening, the uniting of the workers, or the lovers, in the action that would redefine them. Or the shattering of the hourglass -- language itself frozen, shattering, the poet breaking free of the poem. Each of these choices overcoming inertia, reordering time. And the fourth, a different kind of awakening, as the buddha turns, in his hands, the hourglass, the vajra, time itself. Time running out, changing from night to day, from winter to spring, inside to outside, to inside, repeating itself in endless turnings.

7. The Hourglass Itself

The last line of the poem asserts that movement in time is cyclical and reoccurring. Read that way the poem was already in motion when it began, the lovers themselves dimly aware of it. Although the images used, including the conceit of the hourglass, were already in my consciousness and there in the world to be taken up at any time, the poem, in fact, began with a dream and evolved in the course of its writing with the fortuitous discovery of snow, of snow falling. No snow fell in the dream, and how ever often the lovers entwined and the workers leaned on the fourfaced statue, no snow feel there. Perhaps, as Manju Kanchuli suggested, the snow is a recollection, a memory wakened by the rain falling in the street, the slight shudder as we feel the rain, by the rain striking the window drawing the lovers towards each other, into dream. From the dream which I cannot recall I woke to write:

The painting on the wall
above the man and woman entwined
changes shape

within their consciousness

Or the snow is the pristine form of the rain that falls in the street. Whether it precedes, follows from, or parallels the falling of the rain I cannot say. Images passing through the hourglass change shape. Time passes in two ways -- inside the hourglass, outside in the world. In this way the hourglass can be read as consciousness.

The conceit of the hourglass emerged from a poem I had previously written entitled THE SUITCASE. There I had drawn two separate images together, two separate experiences, mirroring each in their portrayal. It seemed to me the images were telescoped onto each other as if through the funnel of an hourglass, and so I called it an hourglass poem, and began thinking to write another such hourglass poem.

The hourglass, however, is not simply a device for transposing of images; it's a device for marking time. And whoever has that device in hand influences the passage of time, the turn of events, the shape of the world they find themselves in. Or the hourglass is the poem itself, the mirrored stanzas the record of its turnings.

Why does snow fall in the hourglass and not sand? Sand falls and buries. I cannot breathe beneath sand, beneath the weight of the final falling grain that covers my eyes...

When rain falls in Manjul's poems, pain is felt, pain closes the poet down, it stills him, till consciousness makes its move

Rain wakens here, it's what draws the lovers and the workers closer together, it strikes the lovers deep within

Time is inexorable, within the hourglass, not sand, but snow, we are not covered by time, we are stilled by its passage

No Manju the hourglass is not phallic, it is not a plaything for the hand, it's more likely the union of the two. See how the sand -the snow- funnels through and fills, how they rock back and forth

The hourglass is the Tao. The seed of day within night, night within day, turning, the world without, the world within

It is two triangles touching at their apex, slipping into each other's realm, a six pointed star, worlds merging, an emblem of love

Hourglass. Our glass. Do we look into it or drink out of it? At a Jewish Wedding we drain the glass and then smash it beneath our feet. Feet of the workers, feast of the workers, wedding of the world

The Hourglass is now an artifact, these fallen words a semblance of time

8. Postscript

Abhi, of course, is right: the poem is in motion, motility is its defining characteristic, The words follow and fall one from the other, they spill down the page, the word "freezing" merely one word passed over by others, without stopping the flow, till the poem comes to full closure, as Manju Kanchuli has emphasized, containing its destructive urges, its contradictions within its form. Were the poet truly interested in breaking open the form, were he unable to contain himself within the poem, with the word "shattered," hourglass in hand, blood pouring down his palm, he would have smeared that canvas Abhi speaks of, trailing his fingerprints across its snow white surface, pitting the canvas with glass fragments, with unspoken pain.

THE HOURGLASS, however, is a merely a poem; its images contained within; its outer form, an idea, and like all ideas, at best transparent, but in the right hands, not those of the poet, incendiary. It would be, not an hourglass, then, a Molotov cocktail -- stopped with a poem. The image of a Molotov cocktail stopped with a poem joins the judgment against language with that against the constraints of time -- language stonewalls and ignites. If we could compress this contradiction into a single moment, if saying and meaning were one, we would no longer be taken in by eloquence. THE HOURGLASS, shattered and whole, identifying the poet by his stutter, by his dependence on words, as he who stammers, he who lisps.

When saying outpaces meaning, when words like high speed boats race ever faster till they seem not to move, the painting on the wall, a mass of whirling color and line becomes no more than a flat expanse. Were meaning not so easily overlooked, the poet's words might clue us in to the reading of the poem, key images and phrases would ground us, and the bridging of contradictions would take us that much closer to having discovered what is at stake within the drama being played out on the page.

The configuration of the lovers and the man in the painting parallels that of the workers and the fourfaced buddha. The configuration is stationary within the movement of the hourglass -- time moves, the protagonists stay put. There is also a parallel between the lovers turning in their sleep (turning perhaps from each other) and the hourglass turning in the buddha's hand. The gestures are unclear to the lovers. Can we say that the gestures of the buddha spoken of in this poem are unclear to him? That they are empty gestures, rituals without meaning, shall we speak of the sleep of the buddha, the empty passage of time?

The most assertive act in the poem is that natural but unforeseeable act of rain striking against the street and window and the lovers deep within. Manjul suggests that this prevents the workers from working, and thus in effect initiates a withdrawal from action that brings on the reign of death. But what if the action were imitated? What if the forgotten protagonists of the poem struck back, went on strike? If the hourglass were in the hands of those who would take their lives "in hand," if it were truly "our glass," would we shatter it, would we break through the constraint of a time and a history that are not ours? Would it be that the reign of death were overthrown? Would it be.

Rising Nepal May 13, 1994 and New Nepal New Voices 2008

SCORPION'S STING
by Wayne Amtzis

Up

The lean ash covered yogi rose from the floor. Once up, it was just as easy to stand as to lie down. He could see the river limp past weary with age, dry bones and nothing more, though the devout still drew blessings from its toils, and washed in its waters -- clothes dried clean spread out on the stone steps of the ghats. Leaning from an alcove, Nag could catch the sun staring him down. An uncommon spring shrouded the valley. Dust and smoke mingled in the air. The dust rose from the roads, the smoke incessantly from the river, from the bodies of the dead.

Most sadhus had moved on. Some further along the river where discarded machinery and piles of bottles and tins gave the temples
and pilgrim's quarters an embattled air. There the most dissolute stayed. Young men with long shiny black hair, tight jeans and leather boots could be seen with them sharing chillums and drinking. Boys from Kalimati, barefoot and unwashed spent the night each with his favorite. Sometimes, disheveled and distraught, a lone woman emerged before morning.

Among this horde of vagabonds one stood apart. He took his pleasure like the rest, but at night sat by the fire, bloodshot eyes unblinking as he practiced inner yoga. His tantric powers and a cold stare that stilled conversation brought him the name "Scorpion". His fingers were long, delicate and bejeweled with rings.

Of the sadhus who had gathered for Shiva Ratri the true devotees went north to Shiva's Mountains. But Nag stayed on at Pashupati. He took to tending the idols niched above the river, smearing Durga and Bhairav with ash from the fire kept continually burning. At night Scorpion and one or another of his tribe would come by. Scorpion took to Nag and spoke to him as a teacher to a disciple. The idols Nag tended were many years ago in Scorpion's care. By morning he would be gone. Like Shiva himself who roamed as a deer he vanished unnoticed.

Some mornings a Yogini came round with tea, but today no one appeared. Nag could walk out with his begging bowl if he felt hungry enough. If he went without what did it matter? His alcove was just above the burning ghats. Wealthy mourners would reward him for his prayers if he cared to pray. Besides, meat could always be found on the cremation grounds. Having spurned convention and overcome revulsion as Scorpion taught, supreme merit could be gained by feasting on the dead. But these disease-ridden corpses? Was he strong enough for that?

Cries from the mourners below broke through his reverie. Shrouded body undressed by flames. "Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond" he murmured as he bent to his own dying fire to smear himself with ash. Withdrawing, wrapped in the cocoon of his body he lost track of the burning. Scorpion's words "the flesh of the dead sustains, the blood of the living releases" rose like pinpricks at the base of his spine, like the brush of an insect climbing his back, a pool of black water simmering in his heart, a single flame hissing at his brow. All day and into the evening, an uncommon spring, and it was only the beginning.

***
Never having married, Didi felt no need to leave her ancestral home. That low lying land was the choicest of valley plots. That was why her younger brother Vishnu saw no reason to remarry after his first wife's untimely death and his second's running off with that no account from the army. Brother and sister lived together as householders. Didi worked the fields and raised the daughter of the first marriage the son of the second. Laksman, his face as vibrant as his mother's, was the village favorite, his laughter and cries resounding everywhere. Didi resented him as she did the mother who ran off. The daughter she worked, but the son got his way.

It was already midsummer, and the long dry riverbeds were sand, stone and dust. Only foul pools and torpid streams were to be seen –run off from the carpet factories that sucked up thousands of gallons of water for the ever-growing city. Hill top reservoirs holding last year's rain offered barely enough drinking water for the ever growing city. A few farmers had broken the pipes that skirted their lands, but it wasn't enough. Fields needed to be flooded before the rice could be planted. The only recourse was to propitiate the gods.

On the eleventh day of the new moon, the men of each village visited local shrines to sacrifice and to appease the deities. Then they went to the rivers to beg of the god who once dwelt there in the form of a fish. To no avail; a cloud of dust rose as high as the hills. Snakes of beaten silver dropped into the wells in hope that the valley's ancient rulers, the Nagas, would return bringing water, sunk into the mud.

On the full moon, with Laksman in hand, Didi slipped out and walked across the fields and then along the dying river past an overturned car and piles of rusted machinery just beyond the road past the bridge on a rise where a band of sadhus had camped all summer. A bargain was struck. Slipping an amethyst ring from his hand onto a string and tying it around the boy's throat, Scorpion whispered something in Laksman's ear that made him shiver. That night it seemed frogs could be heard croaking, but it was merely the sound of the river shrinking into itself
The rains bargained for did not come. Nor did the valley become a lake once again. Laksman like the Sadhus disappeared with the dawn.

***
By the fire sat Gauri, a Shivite from Bengal, and Dhan, an apprentice faith healer, more like Gauri’s dog. With the babas the faith healer was a drunk among the stoned, a talker among the speechless. The Shivite's eyes steadied to a single point as deadly as a scorpion's sting and the faith healer ceased muttering about the boy. Nag stoked the fire, the first of many rings, one with a purple stone, on his finger. And though he had long ago stopped listening he heard once again the boy's shrill cry, followed this time not by the whip of the scorpion's tail, but by the frog's unmistakable croaking.

Kathmandu, 1978/81

Published in Rising Nepal May 13, 1994 and New Nepal New Voices 2008

RISING NEPAL 3/ 25/ 94

THE COMING OF RAM

Up

Belongings tied to his back, rupees tucked into his waist, the blue rose of sunset behind him, if he hurried he could reach Kathmandu before dark, but what would hurrying bring? Tomorrow was time enough to find his way. Besides, hungry and cold, wrapped in an army blanket, he didn't sense how warm the valley was in October. In the plains forewarned -- so near to Shiva's mountains, of the cold.

His nose brought him to a tea stall, smoky and full of broad-faced peasants drinking chang, beer made from fermented barley. Sweet tea was what he wanted. He held the glass in his hand a long time before drinking, gazing at the coals of the sunken fire. He tried not to listen. Their jangling words and whine confused and irritated him. Were they laughing at that woman buying three eggs? Each transaction was mimicked by these bold drinkers bringing ever more laughter and shouts.

He didn't want to remain, but darkness had settled in. He asked the woman, hauling a fresh bucket of chang through the open doorway, about a room for the night. The barely-clad peasants, short, muscular men with filthy bodies teeth missing from open grins, joked among themselves, or so Ram thought, as he came to terms -yes, the floor in the back would do.

Down from the hills, day laborers with only tenuous ties to family or village, working for a pittance bearing other men's loads, they drank, gambled and joked. Since Ram was staying, they offered him their beer. With gestures he refused, more interested in the mound of rice and the tiny plates of dal and vegetables set before him. He ate, eyes cast down, listening to the men as they talked and gambled.

The meal, the lantern's dull glow and the fire made the small room, the dirt floor and wooden benches comfortable and comforting. On the wall a framed picture of Durga killing the buffalo demon, though dusty and caked with forgotten offerings and flowers garlanding the goddess, drew from Ram a mumbled prayer.

The men spoke now in a dialect that Ram understood. Their playfulness and camaraderie drew him in .He wanted, on this the last day of his wandering, to be a part, and not apart from what happens. When he picked up the dice he was theirs. Not used to the warm brew that tasted so good, he fell asleep after a few rounds thinking he had won as many rupees as he had wagered.

When he woke it was late morning, the street thronged with people, laundry hung on the bushes and fences. In the shops women haggled over prices, his new found friends nowhere to be seen. The innkeeper asked for paisa to pay for morning tea and Ram reached for his treasure. His purse was gone; only his blanket and a few possessions, his clothes and utensils remained.

These he set out before him in an open square in Kathmandu. They brought a good price. Soon clothes and utensils were replaced by combs, powders and unnamable odds and ends all laid out on a thin piece of plastic. The first winter wasn't as harsh as he expected. He grew used to the cold as one grows used to anything. The distant mountains meant less to him than the god Shiva to the passing tourist.

Kathmandu, 1979/81