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| John Gallas |
Rajasthan Miniatures
These little verses were written on trains, camels, tuk tuks, taxis and feet in Rajasthan this Easter. A general happy bumpiness explains their shortness, and 46 degrees their wobbly vision. They are a tourist’s show, though they all began true. They are dedicated, now I come to think of it, to Kaloo (Blackie), the gentle beast that carried me along the Thar Desert, and his owner, who sang the songs and poetry in the middle of boiling blimming nowhere.
7
in the fields near Kotputli: not Brueghel’s Haymakers
They do the same in even light :
I cuts, some winnow, others sleep,
some bind, some carry, some wend home
towards the orange end of day
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silver, turquoise, pink.
8
Amber Palace elephants go home
At noon, the Regulations kind,
J thumps home his painted wrinkles
boom boom
to faint and sleep bigtime.
His patient foots
have drummed the twinkled ghosts
from out the stones
and he is whacked ;
and dreamless thund’rous snores
whilst they, like ancient powder,
fall to rest.
9
a goatherd near Jaisalmer
K walks his goats
attended by
equinoctial
dust.
Upon his head a giant rose
sits wound in tiers, where all the gods
all cushioned talk,
sometimes to him.
10
the Good Camel
Though treesare free
L is fonder
of beans,
which means
he is obedient,
strong,
and kind,
for he stretches
his master’s pocket.
11
In the Thar desert : noon sleep at a village
O’er hot bricks
farmers droop like burning flowers.
There is no sound to them.
Tiny sparrows, M, N , O,
whirr within to make
the fair-faint glassy chiming of their dreams
until they burn no more.
12
shepherds in the desert
Here –
and here –
midst silver thorns,
soft-sudden sand and bells,
go P, to north, and Q, to south.
Their sheepy shifts all warm collide
and they shake hands amidst
the vasty field
and say Hello by phone,
smiling magic in the plain.
The final instalment of seven poems will be published here on Tuesday.
Fresh Air and The Story of Molecule is in two parts: Fresh Air is an exhilarating, freewheeling ride through landscapes and languages. The poems, all written on the move (tramping the Gobi desert, cycling in Irish drizzle, paddling in Tonga) have the fizz of travellers’ tales, the enchantment and the melancholy of the open road.
The Story of Molecule tells the tale of Molloy Gillies (‘Molecule’), a semi-detached twelve-year-old who one night takes his bike from the shed and pedals off to escape Evolution. In Gallas’s comical, heartbreaking sonnet-picaresque, Molecule encounters dangers, kindness, police cars and mauri on the roads of the South Island, while his father, his aunt, a bathroom fitter and a police chief wonder what life, and freedom, are all about.
Together, these two books explore a world newly discovered in the imagination: ‘Imagine: in the atlas of my soul / I could not make a thing so lovely.’