Icelight

By Artur Domoslawski

Icelight, Ranjit Hoskote's eighth collection of poems, enacts the experience of standing at the edge—of a life, a landscape, a world assuming new contours or going up in flames. Yet, the protagonists of these poems also stand at the edge of epiphany. In the title poem, we meet the Neolithic cave-dweller who, dazzled by a shapeshifting nature, crafts the first icon. The 'I' of these poems is not a sovereign 'I'. A questing, questioning voice, it locates itself in the web of life, in relation to the cosmos. In 'Tacet', the speaker asks: "What if I had/ no skin/ Of what/ am I the barometer?" Long committed to the Japanese mono no aware aesthetic, Hoskote embraces talismans, premonitions, fossils: active residues from the previous lives of people and places. Icelight is a book about transitions and departures, eloquent in its acceptance of transience in the face of mortality.

Aubade

Rumours of wind, banners of cloud.
The low earth shakes but the storm
has not arrived. You pack

for the journey, look up, look through
the doors at trees shedding their leaves
too soon, a track on which silk shoes
would be wasted, a moon

still dangling above a boat.
Wearing your salt mask, you face
the mulberry shadows.
The valley into which
you're rappelling

is you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Release date: Mar 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9780819500540

Artur Domoslawski

Ranjit Hoskote is a poet, cultural theorist, and curator. This year he was honored with the 7th Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia Poetry Award by the Jaipur Literature Festival. His seven collections of poetry include, Vanishing Acts: New and Selected Poems, Central Time and Jonahwhale (published by Arc in the UK as The Atlas of Lost Beliefs,) which won a Poetry Book Society Summer Recommendation in 2020 and, most recently, Hunchprose. His poems have been translated into German, Hindi, Bengali, Irish Gaelic, Marathi, Swedish, Spanish, and Arabic.

Book preview

I

TACET

She stood under a drizzle of copper leaves

mouth opened in a hymn of praise

Voice tacet

Only the chirping of sparrows

heard on the terrace

above the sleeping town

Be opaque

her sisters had said

because this crust

is what will get you through

Standing above the chasm

opened in the eastern rock she thought

What if there was no border

between flesh and light

What if I had

no skin

Of what

am I the barometer?

AUBADE

Rumours of wind, banners of cloud.

The low earth shakes but the storm

has not arrived. You pack

for the journey, look up, look through

the doors at trees shedding their leaves

too soon, a track on which silk shoes

would be wasted, a moon

still dangling above a boat.

Wearing your salt mask, you face

the mulberry shadows.

The valley into which

you’re rappelling

is you.

RETREAT

This floor is wet with the sea’s retreat

A draggled wing

drapes its shadow on the bell tower

Admiral, your telescope!

Hold fast

The storm could have knuckled you to the floor

Voices wash through the sailor’s sleep

He scoops darkness

from darkness

The surveyor continues to look

for a world at the other end

of his spyglass

knowing it’s out there

a distant cousin to the one

that’s blowing up around him

WITNESS

Speak, Earth,

in consolations of dewbud and darkening ray

turning to coal and slate in the cold mineshaft

where I laid my hand

on cryptic passages carved from tidal night

while voices hurried

through the locked air

men with sharpened arrows

Look for him!

I’ve found the seed bed, Earth, I wait for you

to say: It’s time. Let me tell you

why you’re here

ROCK

Now call it rock this edge

between your feet and blue

on a scarp thrust up from the seabed

uma grande onda

the nearest house a mile away

the nearest voices travelling

overhead through cables

tossed from pylon to pylon

Jump and you’ll be one

with all there is to know

the missing piece of the puzzle

joining the Unknown

Its lava magnet heart still casting a field

through moss and bramble

the rock holds you in place

NOOR

i. m. Zarina Hashmi (1937–2020)

Pinpricks of light

in the sky’s black yurt

Looking up from a rutted road

as our clay-spattered boots

make common cause with shovels

and burst tyres

our eyes narrow and widen

to grasp the incoming code

But that light is both marrow and bone

It defeats the gaze

What we’ve lost

reclaims us

Who can translate

its pulse?

SPUR

Am I the boy

who climbed this spur

and laid claim

to the scrubland sweating

in its shade?

What coiled through me

and sheared into space?

A memory of colours churning wet

obsidian saffron jade

transmitted from other lives

Have I stood here before?

TRIGGER

i. m. Devapayya Nadkarni

Let’s assume

I was that man with a bolt-action rifle

and a physician’s split-handle bag

heir to soldiers of fortune

who left his