The Lost
Horoscope is a
longish, Gerontian type of poem; an old man trying to come to grips
with his life. The narrator in Yuyutsu Sharma's poem is looking for his
horoscope - ‘A scroll of homemade scented paper’. In the process, he realizes
that all the predictions that the ‘lanky priest’ made, may have been already
lived in a series of ‘monstrous Nostradamus moments.’
How are these moments suffered or even survived? By means of a phrase. In poem after poem, Yuyutsu Sharma negotiates his experiences in terms of language, the only tool that the poet has: the word is the way out of the world bearing in on him like a tidal wave.
In Dai, Chengdu, for instance, the overtures,
even invasions, of a lady (‘Her eyes shone like blackbirds/in the white nest of
her singing face’) are made sensible as attempts to find the name of a
relationship that can explain the attraction she feels for the poet. The
poem is a search for a word that resolves the violence of the interactions:
Dai, meaning brother.
Yuyutsu’s poetic persona perceives himself, naturally, as an endangered species. Its sanity and even survival are wholly dependent on words, a means to re-live and make sense of the little catastrophes that the hour hands of the clock tick through. Words and phrases, that eternalize the near-apocalyptic Nostradamus moments.
Words and phrases that help the narrator to wrap the universe around
his eyes; with the verbal shades on, he can gaze deep into the heart of the
moment that nearly destroyed him. An accurate word is born when the poet dies a
little every time he brings his experience-at first an event, then
meaning-to speech. It is in this sense that in these new poems,
Yuyutsu Sharma finds his lost horoscope.
--CP
SURENDRAN
C.P. Surendran is a poet, novelist, journalist and
screenplay writer. His poetry collections include Gemini II, Posthumous
Poems, Canaries on the Moon and Portraits of the Space We Occupy. He
is the author of three novels, An Iron Harvest, Lost, Found and
most recently, One Love and the Many Lives of Osip B. He divides his
time between Bombay and Delhi.
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