If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine. 

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

My Country by Dorothea Mackellar

The love of field and coppice,

Of green and shaded lanes.

Of ordered woods and gardens

Is running in your veins,

Strong love of grey-blue distance

Brown streams and soft dim skies

I know but cannot share it,

My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,

A land of sweeping plains,

Of ragged mountain ranges,

Of droughts and flooding rains.

I love her far horizons,

I love her jewel-sea,

Her beauty and her terror -

The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest

All tragic to the moon,

The sapphire-misted mountains,

The hot gold hush of noon.

Green tangle of the brushes,

Where lithe lianas coil,

And orchids deck the tree-tops

And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!

Her pitiless blue sky,

When sick at heart, around us,

We see the cattle die -

But then the grey clouds gather,

And we can bless again

The drumming of an army,

The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!

Land of the Rainbow Gold,

For flood and fire and famine,

She pays us back threefold -

Over the thirsty paddocks,

Watch, after many days,

The filmy veil of greenness

That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,

A wilful, lavish land -

All you who have not loved her,

You will not understand -

Though earth holds many splendours,

Wherever I may die,

I know to what brown country

My homing thoughts will fly.

Day of Wrath (The Schoolboy's Tale) by Christina Stead

Do the moutains wear black for the death of a bee in the old world? Not so in the new. Perhaps Ardennes wept over the “unreturning brave”, but I saw death ride naked on a tropic shore and his breath never darkened the water nor brushed the sky; nature's children drowned, curdled the water in their blood, while she painted her cheeks, wreathed in smiles, and the hills sparked with jollity by the pacific sea.

I lived in Avallon, a waterside village in the seaport. A woman in the district was divorced for adultery. Her husband was a cabinet minister, a rich man, coarse, luxurious, and trynnical. Public opinion was bitter against his wife because she had left his house and gone to live with her lover and it was proved that because they were poor, she had slept with her two children nightly in her lover's bed. The children had to appear in court and give this evidence. The father renounced these children, who he declared were not of his blood, and he left all three in great poverty: this was not condemned, for a woman who forsakes wealth for poverty is obviously poor-spirited, and beneath commiseration: even the poor despised her.

The son was ten years old, the daughter was fourteen. I knew her, her name was Viola. She was pretty, but thin, with long black hair, and rather smart with her tongue. Certainly she suffered in such an honest city, where the “Decameron” was forbidden, and England's colonial history is expurgated for the school books.

I saw her mother once, a pretty, dark, sweet woman, who ventured timidly into the ladies cabin on the ferry and looked quickly but without expectation of greeting at the female faces decorating the walls. When I raised my hat to her she smiled with pleasure, but with indulgence also; she knew I pitied her, but she regarded us all very calmly from another world. The ladies were indignant that she continued to live in our district. “She would have at least the delicacy to go where she is not known,” said my maiden aunt. Society, great beast of tender skin, blind with elephant ears, fell indigent, lashed its little tail and got hot round the rump. It required a sacrifice, and when Jumbo wants something the god themselves obey.

One Wednesday afternoon, the four o'clock ferry, which carried the school children home from tow, was struck amidships by an ocean liner and sank immediately, carrying down more than fifty souls. Thirty children were drowned, and all those who died were from our village of Avallon. I went down to catch the four-thirty ferry and saw the stretchers with bodies brought in already by the rescuers. All the way home, with my book on the seat, lifebouys and splinterd wood rose up into the bays and rivers. Eddies of soot and oil floated past. In a few minutes we reached the spot where the ferry lay with her passengers, and I felt paralyzed with a strange and almost voluptuous cramp, and my spirit being wound out of me like a djinn out of a pot. We went dead slow, with our flag at halfmast, and there was a silence on the boat. I thought of those people sitting below, almost living, with a glow on their cheeks still through the green gloom of the deep water channel; they seemed a company that had gone apart for some conclave. I believe my two young sisters were there, waiting for me with open eyes, and I wanted to dive in, but I could not move. When we neared home I saw my little brother running and jumping on our lawn, so I was reassured.

After a few days, when the last rumours and hoped had died out, and the whole village was in mourning, in the lovely weather, only one piece of fantasy remained. Viola alone had not been found. She must have been carried, or been lost in the deeper mud at the bottom; the ferry itself had moved several hundred feet. It seemed to my mother and aunt that this was the “judgement of God” though for what mortal sins the other bereaved women had been punished, no one thought to conjecture.

At the end of the week Viola was found on one end of the wreck, standing upright, uninjured, her right foot simply entangled in a rope. The founts of pitty at this word broek the seadl and jettled in each breast, and everyone that night had before his eys the image of Viola standing in the green gloon for a week, upright, looking for the rescuers, astonished that they did not come for her, perhaps with a lively word in her lips at ther slowness, and then prisoned by her poor weak foot, decaying, but with her arms still floating up; a watermaiden tangled in a lily-food, and not able to reach the surface. I cried and thought how she died in that attitude to ask pity.

In fact, it turned out that wat, or at least, if the church and justice were not moved, for they should be above the frailties of fresh and blood, the women began to lament on her mother's account, to say she was well punished and one could even pity er. The beast was appeased, as in ancient days, by the sacrifice of a virgin. 

Telephone Conversation by Wole Soyinka

The price seemed reasonable, location

Indifferent. The landlady swore she lived

Off premises. Nothing remained

But self-confession. "Madam" , I warned,

"I hate a wasted journey - I am African."

Silence. Silenced transmission of pressurized good-breeding. Voice, when it came,

Lipstick coated, long gold-rolled

Cigarette-holder pipped. Caught I was, foully.

"HOW DARK?"...I had not misheard...."ARE YOU LIGHT OR VERY DARK?" Button B. Button A. Stench

Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak.

Red booth. Red pillar-box. Red double-tiered

Omnibus squelching tar.

It was real! Shamed

By ill-mannered silence, surrender

Pushed dumbfoundment to beg simplification.

Considerate she was, varying the emphasis-

"ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT" Revelation came

"You mean- like plain or milk chocolate?"

Her accent was clinical, crushing in its light

Impersonality. Rapidly, wave-length adjusted

I chose. "West African sepia"_ and as afterthought.

"Down in my passport." Silence for spectroscopic

Flight of fancy, till truthfulness changed her accent

Hard on the mouthpiece "WHAT'S THAT?" conceding "DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS." "Like brunette."

"THAT'S DARK, ISN'T IT?"

"Not altogether.

Facially, I am brunette, but madam you should see the rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet.

Are a peroxide blonde. Friction, caused-

Foolishly madam- by sitting down, has turned

My bottom raven black- One moment madam! - sensing

Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap

About my ears- "Madam," I pleaded, "wouldn't you rather

See for yourself?"

The River Merchant's Wife by Li Po

translated by Ezra Pound 

While my hair was still cut straight 
across my forehead
I played at the front gate, pulling
flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing
horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with
blue plums. 
And we went on living in the village of 
Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or 
suspicion. 

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never
looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling, 
I desired my dust to be mingled with
yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river
of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise 
overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went 
out,
By the gate now, the moss is grown, 
the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in 
wind.
The paired butterflies are already 
yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the
narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-sa.

The Diameter Of The Bomb by Yehuda Amichai

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters

and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,

with four dead and eleven wounded.

And around these, in a larger circle

of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered

and one graveyard. But the young woman

who was buried in the city she came from,

at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,

enlarges the circle considerably,

and the solitary man mourning her death

at the distant shores of a country far across the sea

includes the entire world in the circle.

And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans

that reaches up to the throne of God and

beyond, making a circle with no end and no God.

Within a Grove by Ryunosuke Akutagawa

The Testimony of a Woodcutter Questioned by a High Police Commissioner

Yes, sir. Certainly, it was I who found the body. This morning, as usual, I went to cut my daily quota of cedars, when I found the body in a grove in a hollow in the mountains. The exact location? About 150 meters off the Yamashina stage road. It’s an out-of-the-way grove of bamboo and cedars.

The body was lying flat on its back dressed in a bluish silk kimono and a wrinkled head-dress of the Kyoto style. A single sword-stroke had pierced the breast. The fallen bamboo-blades around it were stained with bloody blossoms. No, the blood was no longer running. The wound had dried up, I believe. And also, a gad-fly was stuck fast there, hardly noticing my footsteps.

You ask me if I saw a sword or any such thing?

No, nothing, sir. I found only a rope at the root of a cedar near by. And . . . well, in addition to a rope, I found a comb. That was all. Apparently he must have made a battle of it before he was murdered, because the grass and fallen bamboo-blades had been trampled down all around.

“A horse was near by?”

No, sir. It’s hard enough for a man to enter, let alone a horse.

The Testimony of a Traveling Buddhist Priest Questioned by a High Police Commissioner

The time? Certainly, it was about noon yesterday, sir. The unfortunate man was on the road from Sekiyama to Yamashina. He was walking toward Sekiyama with a woman accompanying him on horseback, who I have since learned was his wife. A scarf hanging from her head hid her face from view. All I saw was the color of her clothes, a lilac-colored suit. Her horse was a sorrel with a fine mane. The lady’s height? Oh, about four feet five inches. Since I am a Buddhist priest, I took little notice about her details. Well, the man was armed with a sword as well as a bow and arrows. And I remember that he carried some twenty odd arrows in his quiver.

Little did I expect that he would meet such a fate. Truly human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning. My words are inadequate to express my sympathy for him.

The Testimony of a Policeman Questioned by a High Police Commissioner

The man that I arrested? He is a notorious brigand called Tajomaru. When I arrested him, he had fallen off his horse. He was groaning on the bridge at Awataguchi. The time? It was in the early hours of last night. For the record, I might say that the other day I tried to arrest him, but unfortunately he escaped. He was wearing a dark blue silk kimono and a large plain sword. And, as you see, he got a bow and arrows somewhere. You say that this bow and these arrows look like the ones owned by the dead man? Then Tajomaru must be the murderer. The bow wound with leather strips, the black lacquered quiver, the seventeen arrows with hawk feathers—these were all in his possession I believe. Yes, Sir, the horse is, as you say, a sorrel with a fine mane. A little beyond the stone bridge I found the horse grazing by the roadside, with his long rein dangling. Surely there is some providence in his having been thrown by the horse.

Of all the robbers prowling around Kyoto, this Tajomaru has given the most grief to the women in town. Last autumn a wife who came to the mountain back of the Pindora of the Toribe Temple, presumably to pay a visit, was murdered, along with a girl. It has been suspected that it was his doing. If this criminal murdered the man, you cannot tell what he may have done with the man’s wife. May it please your honor to look into this problem as well.

The Testimony of an Old Woman Questioned by a High Police Commissioner

Yes, sir, that corpse is the man who married my daughter. He does not come from Kyoto. He was a samurai in the town of Kokufu in the province of Wakasa. His name was Kanazawa no Takehiko, and his age was twenty-six. He was of a gentle disposition, so I am sure he did nothing to provoke the anger of others.

My daughter? Her name is Masago, and her age is nineteen. She is a spirited, fun-loving girl, but I am sure she has never known any man except Takehiko. She has a small, oval, dark-complected face with a mole at the corner of her left eye.

Yesterday Takehiko left for Wakasa with my daughter. What bad luck it is that things should have come to such a sad end! What has become of my daughter? I am resigned to giving up my son-in-law as lost, but the fate of my daughter worries me sick. For heaven’s sake leave no stone unturned to find her. I hate that robber Tajomaru, or whatever his name is. Not only my son-in-law, but my daughter . . . (Her later words were drowned in tears. )

Tajomaru’s Confession

I killed him, but not her. Where’s she gone? I can’t tell. Oh, wait a minute. No torture can make me confess what I don’t know. Now things have come to such a head, I won’t keep anything from you.

Yesterday a little past noon I met that couple. Just then a puff of wind blew, and raised her hanging scarf, so that I caught a glimpse of her face. Instantly it was again covered from my view. That may have been one reason; she looked like a Bodhisattva. At that moment I made up my mind to capture her even if I had to kill her man.

Why? To me killing isn’t a matter of such great consequence as you might think. When a woman is captured, her man has to be killed anyway. In killing, I use the sword I wear at my side. Am I the only one who kills people? You, you don’t use your swords. You kill people with your power, with your money. Sometimes you kill them on the pretext of working for their good. It’s true they don’t bleed. They are in the best of health, but all the same you’ve killed them. It’s hard to say who is a greater sinner, you or me. (An ironical smile. )

But it would be good if I could capture a woman without killing her man. So, I made up my mind to capture her, and do my best not to kill him. But it’s out of the question on the Yamashina stage road. So I managed to lure the couple into the mountains.

It was quite easy. I became their traveling companion, and I told them there was an old mound in the mountain over there, and that I had dug it open and found many mirrors and swords. I went on to tell them I’d buried the things in a grove behind the mountain, and that I’d like to sell them at a low price to anyone who would care to have them. Then . . . you see, isn’t greed terrible? He was beginning to be moved by my talk before he knew it. In less than half an hour they were driving their horse toward the mountain with me.

When he came in front of the grove, I told them that the treasures were buried in it, and I asked them to come and see. The man had no objection—he was blinded by greed. The woman said she would wait on horseback. It was natural for her to say so, at the sight of a thick grove. To tell you the truth, my plan worked just as I wished, so I went into the grove with him, leaving her behind alone.

The grove is only bamboo for some distance. About fifty yards ahead there’s a rather open clump of cedars. It was a convenient spot for my purpose. Pushing my way through the grove, I told him a plausible lie that the treasures were buried under the cedars. When I told him this, he pushed his laborious way toward the slender cedar visible through the grove. After a while the bamboo thinned out, and we came to where a number of cedars grew in a row. As soon as we got there, I seized him from behind. Because he was a trained, sword-bearing warrior, he was quite strong, but he was taken by surprise, so there was no help for him. I soon tied him up to the root of a cedar. Where did I get a rope? Thank heaven, being a robber, I had a rope with me, since I might have to scale a wall at any moment. Of course it was easy to stop him from calling out by gagging his mouth with fallen bamboo leaves.

When I disposed of him, I went to his woman and asked her to come and see him, because he seemed to have been suddenly taken sick. It’s needless to say that this plan also worked well. The woman, her sedge hat off, came into the depths of the grove, where I led her by the hand. The instant she caught sight of her husband, she drew a small sword. I’ve never seen a woman of such violent temper. If I’d been off guard, I’d have got a thrust in my side. I dodged, but she kept on slashing at me. She might have wounded me deeply or killed me. But I’m Tajomaru. I managed to strike down her small sword without drawing my own. The most spirited woman is defenseless without a weapon. At least I could satisfy my desire for her without taking her husband’s life.

Yes . . . without taking his life. I had no wish to kill him. I was about to run away from the grove, leaving the woman behind in tears, when she frantically clung to my arm. In broken fragments of words, she asked that either her husband or I die. She said it was more trying than death to have her shame known to two men. She gasped out that she wanted to be the wife of whichever survived. Then a furious desire to kill him seized me. (Gloomy excitement. )

Telling you in this way, no doubt I seem a crueler man than you. But that’s because you didn’t see her face. Especially her burning eyes at that moment. As I saw her eye to eye, I wanted to make her my wife even if I were to be struck by lightning. I wanted to make her my wife . . . this single desire filled my mind. This was not only lust, as you might think. At that time if I’d had no other desire than lust, I’d surely not have minded knocking her down and running away. Then I wouldn’t have stained my sword with his blood. But the moment I gazed at her face in the dark grove, I decided not to leave there without killing him.

But I didn’t like to resort to unfair means to kill him. I untied him and told him to cross swords with me. (The rope that was found at the root of the cedar is the rope I dropped at the time. ) Furious with anger, he drew his thick sword. And quick as thought, he sprang at me ferociously, without speaking a word. I needn’t tell you how our fight turned out. The twenty-third stroke . . . please remember this. I’m impressed with this fact still. Nobody under the sun has ever clashed swords with me twenty strokes. (A cheerful smile. )

When he fell, I turned toward her, lowering my blood-stained sword. But to my great astonishment she was gone. I wondered to where she had run away. I looked for her in the clump of cedars. I listened, but heard only a groaning sound from the throat of the dying man.

As soon as we started to cross swords, she may have run away through the grove to call for help. When I thought of that, I decided it was a matter of life and death to me. So, robbing him of his sword, and bow and arrows, I ran out to the mountain road. There I found her horse still grazing quietly. It would be a mere waste of words to tell you the later details, but before I entered town I had already parted with the sword. That’s all my confession. I know that my head will be hung in chains anyway, so put me down for the maximum penalty. (A defiant attitude.)

The Confession of a Woman Who Has Come to the Shimizu Temple

That man in the blue silk kimono, after forcing me to yield to him, laughed mockingly as he looked at my bound husband. How horrified my husband must have been! But no matter how hard he struggled in agony, the rope cut into him all the more tightly. In spite of myself I ran stumblingly toward his side. Or rather I tried to run toward him, but the man instantly knocked me down. Just at that moment I saw an indescribable light in my husband’s eyes. Something beyond expression . . . his eyes make me shudder even now. That instantaneous look of my husband, who couldn’t speak a word, told me all his heart. The flash in his eyes was neither anger nor sorrow . . . only a cold light, a look of loathing. More struck by the look in his eyes than by the blow of the thief, I called out in spite of myself and fell unconscious.

In the course of time I came to, and found that the man in blue silk was gone. I saw only my husband still bound to the root of the cedar. I raised myself from the bamboo-blades with difficulty, and looked into his face; but the expression in his eyes was just the same as before.

Beneath the cold contempt in his eyes, there was hatred. Shame, grief, and anger . . . I don’t know how to express my heart at that time. Reeling to my feet, I went up to my husband.

“Takejiro,” I said to him, “since things have come to this pass, I cannot live with you. I’m determined to die . . . but you must die, too. You saw my shame. I can’t leave you alive as you are.”

This was all I could say. Still he went on gazing at me with loathing and contempt. My heart breaking, I looked for his sword. It must have been taken by the robber. Neither his sword nor his bow and arrows were to be seen in the grove. But fortunately my small sword was lying at my feet. Raising it over head, once more I said, “Now give me your life. I’ll follow you right away.”

When he heard these words, he moved his lips with difficulty. Since his mouth was stuffed with leaves, of course his voice could not be heard at all. But at a glance I understood his words. Despising me, his look said only, “Kill me.” Neither conscious nor unconscious, I stabbed the small sword through the lilac-colored kimono into his breast.

Again at this time I must have fainted. By the time I managed to look up, he had already breathed his last—still in bonds. A streak of sinking sunlight streamed through the clump of cedars and bamboos, and shone on his pale face. Gulping down my sobs, I untied the rope from his dead body. And . . . and what has become of me since I have no more strength to tell you. Anyway I hadn’t the strength to die. I stabbed my own throat with the small sword, I threw myself into a pond at the foot of the mountain, and I tried to kill myself in many ways. Unable to end my life, I am still living in dishonor. (A lonely smile. ) Worthless as I am, I must have been forsaken even by the most merciful Kwannon. I killed my own husband. I was violated by the robber. Whatever can I do? Whatever can I . . . I . . . (Gradually, violent sobbing. )

The Story of the Murdered Man, as Told Through a Medium

After violating my wife, the robber, sitting there, began to speak comforting words to her. Of course I couldn’t speak. My whole body was tied fast to the root of a cedar. But meanwhile I winked at her many times, as much as to say “Don’t believe the robber.” I wanted to convey some such meaning to her. But my wife, sitting dejectedly on the bamboo leaves, was looking hard at her lap. To all appearance, she was listening to his words. I was agonized by jealousy. In the meantime the robber went on with his clever talk, from one subject to another. The robber finally made his bold brazen proposal.”Once your virtue is stained, you won’t get along well with your husband, so won’t you be my wife instead? It’s my love for you that made me be violent toward you.”

While the criminal talked, my wife raised her face as if in a trance. She had never looked so beautiful as at that moment. What did my beautiful wife say in answer to him while I was sitting bound there? I am lost in space, but I have never thought of her answer without burning with anger and jealousy. Truly she said, . . .”Then take me away with you wherever you go.”

This is not the whole of her sin. If that were all, I would not be tormented so much in the dark. When she was going out of the grove as if in a dream, her hand in the robber’s, she suddenly turned pale, and pointed at me tied to the root of the cedar, and said, “Kill him! I cannot marry you as long as he lives.” “Kill him!” she cried many times, as if she had gone crazy. Even now these words threaten to blow me headlong into the bottomless abyss of darkness. Has such a hateful thing come out of a human mouth ever before? Have such cursed words ever struck a human ear, even once? Even once such a . . . (A sudden cry of scorn. ) At these words the robber himself turned pale.”Kill him,” she cried, clinging to his arms. Looking hard at her, he answered neither yes nor no . . . but hardly had I thought about his answer before she had been knocked down into the bamboo leaves. (Again a cry of scorn. ) Quietly folding his arms, he looked at me and said, “What will you do with her? Kill her or save her? You have only to nod. Kill her?” For these words alone I would like to pardon his crime.

While I hesitated, she shrieked and ran into the depths of the grove. The robber instantly snatched at her, but he failed even to grasp her sleeve.

After she ran away, he took up my sword, and my bow and arrows. With a single stroke he cut one of my bonds. I remember his mumbling, “My fate is next.” Then he disappeared from the grove. All was silent after that. No, I heard someone crying. Untying the rest of my bonds, I listened carefully, and I noticed that it was my own crying. (Long silence. )

I raised my exhausted body from the foot of the cedar. In front of me there was shining the small sword which my wife had dropped. I took it up and stabbed it into my breast. A bloody lump rose to my mouth, but I didn’t feel any pain. When my breast grew cold, everything was as silent as the dead in their graves. What profound silence! Not a single bird-note was heard in the sky over this grave in the hollow of the mountains. Only a lonely light lingered on the cedars and mountains. By and by the light gradually grew fainter, till the cedars and bamboo were lost to view. Lying there, I was enveloped in deep silence.

Then someone crept up to me. I tried to see who it was. But darkness had already been gathering round me. Someone. . . that someone drew the small sword softly out of my breast in its invisible hand. At the same time once more blood flowed into my mouth. And once and for all I sank down into the darkness of space.

The Grass-eaters by Krishnan Varma

For some time several years ago I was tutor to a spherical boy (now a spherical youth). One

day his ovoid father, Ramaniklal Misrilal, asked me where I lived. I told him. 



Misrilal looked exceedingly distressed. "A pipe, Ajit Babu? Didyou say - a pipe, Ajit Babu?" 



His cuboid wife was near to tears. "A pipe, Ajit Babu? How can you live in a pipe?" 








It was true: at that time I was living in a pipe with my wife, Swapna. 

It was long and three or four feet across.With a piece of sackcloth hung at either end, we had found it far more comfortable than  our previous homes. 



The first was a footpath of Chittaranjan Avenue. We had just arrived in Calcutta from East

Bengal where Hindus and Muslims were killing one another. The footpath was so crowded

with residents, refugees like us and locals, that if you got up at night to relieve yourself you 

would not be sure of finding your place again. One cold morning I woke to find that the 

woman beside me was not Swapna at all but a bag of bones instead. And about fifty or seventy years old. I had one leg over her too. I paid bitterly for my mistake. The woman had

very nearly scratched out my eyes. Then came Swapna, fangs bared, claws out . . . I survived, but minus one ear. Next came the woman's husband, a hill of a man, whirling a
tree over over his head, roaring.  That was my impression, anyway, I fled.



Later in the day Swapna and I moved into an abandoned-looking freight wagon at the railway terminus. A whole wagon to ourselves - a place with doors which could be opened and shut - we did nothing but open and shut them for a full hour - all the privacy a man and wife could want - no fear of waking up with a complete stranger in your arms . . . it was heaven. I felt I was God.


Then one night we woke to find that the world was running away from us: we had been  coupled to a freight train. There was nothing for it but to wait for the train to stop. When it did, miles from Calcutta, we got off, took a passenger train back, and occupied another unwanted-looking wagon. That was not the only time we went to bed in  Calcuta and woke up in another place. I found it an intensely  thrilling experience, but no Swapna. 




She wanted a stationary home; she insisted on it. But she would not say why. If persisted in questioning she sniveled. If I tried to persuade her to change her mind, pointing out all the advantages of living in a wagon - four walls, a roof and door absolutely free of charge, and complete freedom to make love day or night - she sniveled. If I ignored her nagging, meals got delayed, the rice undercooked, the curry over-salted. In the end, I gave in. We would move, I said, even if we had to occupy a house by force, but couldn't she tell me the reason, however irrelevant, why she did not like the wagon?


For the first time in weeks Swapna smiled, a very vague smile. Then, slowly, she drew the edge of her sari over her head, cast her eyes down, turned her face from me, and said in a 
tremulous, barely audible whisper that she (short pause) did (long pause) not want (very 
long pause) her (at jet speed) baby-to-be-born-in-a-running-train. And she buried her face
in her hands. Our fourth child. One died of diphtheria back home (no longer our home) in 
Daca; two, from fatigue, on our long trek on foot to Calcutta. Would the baby be a boy?

I felt no doubt about it; it would be. Someone to look after us in our old age, to do our funeral rites when we died. I suddenly kissed Swapna, since her face was hidden in her hands, on her elbow, and was roundly chided. Kissing, she holds, is a western practice, unclean also, since it amounts to licking, and should be eschewed by all good Hindus. 
I lost no time in looking for a  suitable place for her confinement. She firmly rejected all my suggestions: the railway station platform (too many residents); a little-used overbridge (she was not a kite to live so high above the ground); a water tank that had fall down and was empty (Did I think that she was a frog?)

I thought of suggesting the municipal primary school where I was teaching at the time, but
reluctant. Not that the headmaster would have objected if we had occupied one end of the back veranda: a kindly man, father of eleven, all girls, he never disturbed that cat that regularly kittened in his in-tray. My fear was: suppose Swapna came running into my class,


saying, "Hold the baby for a moment, will you? I'm going to the l-a-t-r -i-n-e." Anyway, we
set out to the school. On the way, near the Sealdah railway station, we came upon a cement
concrete pipe left over from long-ago repairs to underground mains. Unbelievably, it was 
not occupied and, with no prompting from me, she crept into it. That was how we came to 
live in a pipe. 

"It is not proper," said Misrilal, "not at all, for a school master to live in a pipe." He sighed 
deeply. "Why don't you move into one of my buildings, Ajit Babu?" 


The house I might occupy, if I cared to, he explained, was in Entally, not far from where the pipe lay; I should have no difficulty in locating it, it was an old building and there were anumber of old empty coal tar drums on the roof; I could live on the roof if I stacked the
drums in two rows and put a tarpaulin over them. 

We have lived on that roof ever since. It is not as bad as it sounds. The roof is flat, not 
gabled, and it is madie of cemenerb concrete, not corrugated iron sheets. The rent is far 
less than that of other tenants below us - Bijoy Babu, Akhanda Chatterjee and Sagar Sen. We have far more light and ventilation than they. We don't get nibbled by rats and mice and 
rodents as often as they do. And our son, Prodeep, has far more room to play than the 




Prodeep is not with us now; he is in the Naxalite underground. We miss him, terribly. But 
there is some compensation, small though it is. Had he been with us, we would have had to 
wear clothes. Now we don't. Not much, that is. I make do with a loin cloth from further wear and tear. I can spare little from my pension for new clothes. Swapna finds it very 
embarrassing to be in my presence in broad day-light so meagerly clad and so contrives to 
keep her backside and tell her that she has nothing that I have not seen. But she is adamant; she will not turn around. After nightfall, however, she relents: we are both nightblind.  





When we go out - to the communal lavatory, to pick up pieces of coal from the railway track, to gather Grass - we do wear clothes. Grass is our staple food now: a mound of green 
grass boiled with green peppers and salt, and a few ladies of very thin rice gruel.  We took to eating it  when the price of rice started soaring. I had a good mind to do as Bijoy Babu below us is believed to be doing. He has a theory that if you reduce your consumption of food by five grams each day, you will not only not notice t hat you are eating less but after some time you can do without any food at all. One day I happened to notice that he was not very steady on his feet. That gave me pause. He can get around, however badly he totters, because he has two legs; but I have only one. I lost the other after a fall from the roof of a tram. In Calcutta the trams are always crowded and if you can't get into a carriage you may
get up on its roof. The conductor will not stop you. If he tries to, the passengers beat him up,set fire to the tram and any other vehicles parked in the vicinity, loot nearby shops, break 
street lamps, take out the procession, hold a protest meeting, denounce British imperialism, American neo- colonialism, the central government, capitalism and socialism, and set off 
crackers. I don't mind my handicap at all; I need wear only one sandal and thereby save on
footwear. 

So, on the whole, our life together has been very eventful. The events, of course, were not 
always pleasant. But, does it matter? We have survived them. And now, we have no fears 

stabbing another man, a woman dropping her baby in a garbage bin.
every day. We don't need to wear clothes. We have a son to do our funeral rites . We live very quietly, content to look at the passing scene "a tram burning, a man stabbing another man, a woman dropping her baby in a garbage bin.