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Contests : Tom Howard/John H. Reid Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2009 : Second Prize
IN THE DELHI STATION
Time, and the train to Agra,
a dualism: the one moving,
the other still.
I sit in the compartment car
and touch the polished wood.
It is so smooth, rubbed
by the numb thumbs
of the dead hundreds.
Out from its deep grain glow
the eyes of lost Englishmen;
now I see my own eyes start
for a moment
in the deep wood's heart.
The wooden panels are mirrors:
I can see the station
in their polished planes
and the people in crowds
burst through daylight.
An old man, his white skirts
tucked up between his bony thighs,
whispers his goodbyes
to a sweet, brown girl;
she is silent,
but her sari speaks villages:
thatched mud hut,
mute buffalo.
A jobless worker, who will not work
at lesser tasks, basks on bags of rice;
his dark Dravidian skin
is oiled by the sun
and polished in the wood.
The train starts, jumps,
but only starts and jumps;
it does not move,
nor will it in this hour.
Yet, time passes,
and the turbaned bearers,
inevitable,
destined in their being
as the sun rising, pass too.
The wood brightens, the images fade;
I turn to see through windowpanes
the sun blow up the station,
and I am shot with light.
All things widen the eye;
the windows magnify:
turbans, saries, skirts, skin
explode in furious geysers,
flood and flow together
in gypsies of design.
They threaten to swallow up the eye.
Time stops, dead on the track;
I can hear the crack, crack
of waiting hearts
startle the listening love.
The old man and the brown girl
grow to towers above the train;
the sunny worker stretches long
over thousands of rice bags;
the turbaned bearers boom,
magnificent mountains
filling the sky.
What a substance devouring space!
I can taste life in my hand's palm
a delicious mango, delicate yet bold.
And I am mad with color,
mad with flesh and sweat,
with stench and noise and love
rolled up together in the sun
and caught in my senses' seine.
But the train starts, steams,
rears once, bucks, breaks;
time grinds down the track,
and we are off to Agra
and the Taj Mahal.
This poem won second prize in the 2009 Tom
Howard/John H. Reid Poetry Contest sponsored by Tom Howard Books. Author Carmine Dandrea received a $1,000 award. Winning Writers assists this contest. Copyright is reserved to the author.
About Carmine Dandrea
Carmine Dandrea, Professor of Literature and Creative Writing and former editor of Blossom Review, was educated at Hobart College, Brown University, Elmira College, and Cornell University from which he received the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. He has taught at Elmira Free Academy, Elmira College, Corning Community College, and Lake Michigan College. Mr. Dandrea served in the United States Marine Corps and during the Korean War was awarded the Purple Heart Medal. He was a national winner in the Discovery '69 Program of the New York Poetry Center. His 1st book of poems, Heart's Crow, based on experiences in India, was published by P. Lal's Writers Workshop of Calcutta in 1972. His poems have been published in Plaintiff, Transition, Ego Flights, Michigan Magazine, Husson Review, Albion and other literary journals and anthologies. Over 30 of his poems have won prizes and awards. In 1977 the editors of the International Who's Who in Poetry awarded him a Certificate of Distinguished Contributions To Poetry. Wyndham Hall Press published his book-length sequence of poems, American Still Life, in 1992. He has been a Scholar at the 1993 NEH Institute of Chinese Culture and Civilization at the East-West Center in Hawaii and has participated in the Center's 1994 Field Study in the People's Republic of China and its 1995 Field Study in India. His 3rd book, Liberation: a Journey to India, was published in 1995 by P. Lal of the Writers Workshop of Calcutta, India. Foothills Publishing released his 4th book, Undertaking the American Dream, in November 2008. P.Lal of The Writers Workshop of Calcutta published his 5th book, An Infinite Human Tale, in July 2009. Carmine Dandrea has read his work in Athens, Beirut, Istanbul, New Delhi and throughout India, Katmandu, Honolulu, the People's Republic of China, and the United States.
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