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Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                                    #3/thyla3k-sj AUSTRALIAN POETS SERIES 3 The Poetry of Subhash Jaireth Selected by Coral Hull [Above] Photo of Subhash Jaireth by Hanna Jaireth, 1992. I Summer (3) I The Rains (2) I Autumn (6) I The Cool (6) I Spring (4) I Summer (3) The pond has dried and cracks in the parched skin of the clayey bed are dreaming the watery dreams of fish frogs crabs snakes lotuses and lilies I take the hot crust to my mouth and hissing, the saliva disappears. The clay is chewy warm sweet and sticky and at night when you kiss me I hear you whisper of ripples as my nipples grow hard and itchy, I know a purple lotus - a baby elephant - wants to grow in me. But this summer it is hotter than ever and the pond inside me has dried: no ripples no splashes, an empty sky - bland and stunned - and water turned into silence. The Rains (2) Two elephants are playing in the pond and two dark clouds in the sky. In between the pond and the sky I like the moist air, thick heavy languid and translucent. Two elephants are playing in my body one you and the other the insatiable desire. The first jumps out of the pond and raising her trunk rains showers on the muddied wrinkles of the other, after which they change places, the showered and the showerer, the lover and the loved. Two elephants are dreaming in my dream and the rain falls in my sleep and outside. The night is wet and my bed empty waiting in vain for you to come and rain. Autumn (6) What makes the corn so soft, sweet and tepid like milk? Is this the mild autumn rain or the wind rustling gently through the field? No, it's the sun Ma, Rahul tells me, warm, soft and smooth like your belly. Scared by a nightmare, when he walks into my bed at night, I find him sleeping with his arm around me. The thumb of his right hand beached safely in my navel. It seems strange to me, my love, that, like you, he should find my belly snug and homely. Tell me, why do we find the roundness of shapes so tempting that our hands can't resist to caress it? The Cool (6) The early morning sky is so deep and blue that it hurts the eyes. It's best to keep them shut and let the sky drape the fragments of dreams which fill your body. Their residue like an afterglow warms and tints your vision as you listen to the woodpecker knocking on the dry branches of the mango. The monotone beat interrupted by silences lined with the breeze shuffling through the leaves. A cloud of lightness grows around you and like a forlorn feather you are lifted into wilderness. No, I'm not sick my love, it's just that a cloud entered me last night when I was dreaming about you. Spring (4) Once again the girls have hurled the swings around the supple and sturdy branches of the mighty figs, donned their bright red yellow and green dupattas lined with gold and silver threads and let their bodies free to sway like birds in flight. They sing as they push the swings up with their legs, their ankles shimmering like fish in water, the drums urging them not to give up till their feet touch the branches and their laughs ripple through the leaves. On the ground the monkeys look amazed and even the placid buffaloes stop munching, wondering what has happened to the mute giant tree. About the Poet Subhash Jaireth Subhash Jaireth was born in a small town in Punjab, Northern India. Between 1969 and 1978 he spent nine years in Moscow studying geology. He has published poems in Hindi, Russian and English. A collection of his Hindi poems Before the Bullet Hit Me came out in 1994 with Vani Prakashan. A verse-narrative Unfinished Poems for Your Violin was published by Penguin Australia in 1996. His poems have appeared in Imago, LinQ, Northern Perspective, Scarp, Muse, Outrider and Canberra Times. His articles and essays and have been published in the Australian Book Review, Heat, Australian Review of Books, Meanjin and Imago. Jaireth's new book Yashodhara: Six Seasons without You will be published by Wild Peony.    [Above] Photo of Subhash Jaireth by Hanna Jaireth, 1992. I Next I Back I Exit I Thylazine No.3 (March, 2001)