Tuhin Bhowal

Hallucinations at Hell's Cliff

I

Nights illiterate. The city hackneyed us through

Processions of habit. We, in stolid strides

Fled north-west, witnessed summer stew like a roux;

Trees, shacks, tarred participles of sweat to guide

Both our uncalloused mouths, allied as the tides—

Full anchors, half ocean, new shade. Never rain.

The coast, dwindled, swayed against the crops, stone-eyed

Like weed. We stood. Beneath, the Arabian vain

And defeated. And suddenly, passing, the rain.—

II

Aloof the cliffs, we took turns counting ships. Now,

Men, meandering fields for three thousand years, laid

Blistered. What a bargain it was, that time, how

Once allowed so much for so little, decades

At once, snagged back all, again. Ferries arrayed;

Boats jerked their limpid sails. Rafts, kayaks, canoes.

Good at gestures, we got greedy, we got made.

The pink prawns—when lunch was induced to us, who’s

To say—were abused; squid-rings burnt; the sauce so loose.

III

As the surrogate sea snorted high on your face,

I strolled along, sketching the trapezoidal

Bottoms of dogs midair. Flies posed still. Maizes

And maizes of women stood leaned, conical—

Went nowhere, their corn ears heard nothing at all.

Puny cows, chuck-marked, kept yawning as if sleep

Could only be their dream. Hawks, and the seagulls

Killed for fun, while lobsters buried themselves meek.

The beach made men out of men; a cat kissed your feet.

IV

Roads stretched everywhere, relentless as dirt. Keats

Blushed more than he could love, or prove, embarrassed

By the sober beauty of corn. A conceit—

I, too, dreamt of lost vocabularies, dusting

Most between nostrils. Sublime my madnesses,

Like joy, spiralled me, and I spun. I spun blue.

We could not meet again—hills in the distance

Squealed—not even as strangers. This much was true.

We gouged each other’s eyes: Our private rendezvous.

V

On our way back, we could’ve left some vision

Behind. We were too wise. The sea, your hammock

Lulled you to sleep, again and again. Dylan

Said the songs came to him, that the voices spoke.

We heard so much for awhile—my desires weak;

Stale, my desire merely a handful of sand;

My desire was six hundred seagulls choking

On the bones of arid fish, all at once—and

The coastline stood etherised, as fear-stricken hands.

VI

The sky belligerent, glimmered, as a snark

Of elephants crossed the jungle. My desire’s

One of their trunks, drinking water, in the dark.

We couldn’t meet again, not even as strangers.

The night a crab, clawing, barely live, dead dire,

Barely smart. What my body never required

Of your body will be sung. Longing is the one

Apology we manage, the way mute sand

Still slipping my pockets, untranslatable as stars.—

Tuhin Bhowal is a writer, translator, and editor working between three languages: Hindi, Bengali, and English. Recipient of the Deepankar Khiwani Memorial Poetry Prize 2022, his poems and translations appear or are forthcoming in The Margins, Ballast Journal, Redivider, and elsewhere. Tuhin lives alone in Bangalore and tweets @tuhintranslates.