The Raga poem

I've long been a lover of Indian classical music. I find it moving, absorbing and constantly interesting. The forms and instruments are varied, although Western music lovers will probably be most familiar with the raga form, played on the sitar. I think my introduction to Indian music was probably as a teenager, watching Ram Gopal, an Indian dancer, on black-and-white TV.

Later, as an adult, I heard, as did many others, Ravi Shankar playing sitar with Alla Rakha on tabla. I listened to many other musicians - Bismillah Khan, who played shehnai (a kind of shawm), Alla Rakha on the sarod, and many others. I suppose my favourite musician was Nikhil Banerjee, a master of the sitar, and my favourite raga is Raga Sindhu Bhairavi. It's a morning rag, haunting and wistful, but paradoxically it's usually played at the conclusion of a concert.

So I tried to write a poem which contained the same mood as the raga, but it came out as an evening meditation. Oh well. The poem was first published in Seven Senses, Diehard, 2000.


Raga Sindhu Bhairavi

High dust reddens the sunset.
Eyes stare over the Ganges to an infinite question.
As the rag begins, wistfulness falls;
the slow, stretched bass lines evoke nostalgia
for places never seen, times only imagined,
peace abstractly contemplated.
The river-music braids deep surges
and snaking surface currents,
exploring without rhythm,
stiffening gradually into form.
When the tabla enters, its beat channels the flow.
Within the tal strangely liquid stresses
impose a flexible constraint.

Even Ganesha, dancing at dusk, holds a full-bellied grace,
and dark-eyed gopis crowd to touch his broken tusk.
Their worlds transform in the hot and dusty dark;
their wombs will quicken and bring forth sons
nimble as Krishna, fluting the stream's song,
to be all their husbands never are.
The dark water sparkles with floating prayers
until they snuff and sizzle beyond the last believer,
blessed only by a golden moon.



Copyright ©  Colin Will, 2000, 2015