The Lake Fewa & A Horse. ISBN81-85693-34-X 2005 Hardcover pp.108. Rs.250 Indian.

Poems New

by Yuyutsu RD Sharma

Reading Yuyustu RD’s Fewa poem is a truly rewarding experience. Written over a decade, these poems astonish you with their stunning metaphors and reveal the poet’s marvelous grasp over the language, landscape and the people living in it.

Once out of campus circus circles, quitting teaching at Tribhuban University, Yuyustu made his first visit to Lake Fewa in the early 90s. The visit turned out to be a lifetime’s passion and commitment.

The book begins on the vast watery expanses of the Lake where a lonely boat appears somewhere between shafts of sunlight and moves on to bring alive the people of distant regions struggling like mules beneath the shimmering daggers of the Annapurna.

Exploring the mystique of the world’s highest mountains, the poet reverts to his own past, his roots in Punjab and struggle to survive in Delhi. His poems unleash the fretful rambling of an honest individual in the corridors of a bleeding democracy as he flings his illuminated manuscripts into the jaws of skyscrapers and finally returns to turquoise lakes of perfect, deep sleep.

Here we have a magnificent collection—compelling and condensed with rare visions, crying from the agony of the contemporary times.

“Yuyutsu R.D. lives close to the Everest. His poetry climbs mountains, swims in rivers and paints the falling leaves in copper. This tango with nature also occurs when Yuyutsu R.D.closes the window for a moment…” – Ronny Someck, in Iton 77.

“Yuyustu R.D. Sharma’s poetry runs clear, tender, and passionate with a rage that often erupts volcanic in the face of the cruelty, despair, and injustice that saddles the disenfranchised poor of the earth. Poems powerful and devastating yet gentle as flower petals wafting to earth in a summer breeze.” – Michael Annis, senior editor, Howling Dog press.

“Yuyustu R.D. Sharma has his feet firmly planted on the ground. His poetry is rooted in its landscape and environment and thereby gains its strength. He has also served the muse assiduously over the decades and small wonder that she has rewarded him.” – Keki N. Daruwalla

Book Extracts

A Morning Walk

Leaving behind

the bed of white lotus

and wheezing

partner of my sleep

I rushed out

towards the bridge

freshly built over

a golden stream.

But on finding

a funeral pyre

burning on its

emerald edge

I closed my eyes

and like some Buddha

in the dark interior

raised my shaking,

invisible hands

to salute

the great master

Death.

.

The Lake Fewa, an Unfinished Poem

From the shoulder of a hill

from a garden restaurant where

exhausted tourists lie, massaging

hysteric limbs of a nightmare,

from dingy tea-shop

of a grandma, crying from

the smoke of her charred dreams,

from the balcony

of a hut where a blonde Buddhist nun

sleeps with a local drug addict,

from Naudada,

from Lumle, from the luminous sheets

of the windows of a racing car

or like a despot

of once a famished principality, Sarangkot,

from an airplane

with nose of snobbery ticking

the gleaming summits of fishtail

from the colorful pages

of a coffee table book,

from the fury of the goddess

who created the lake to avenge

the unkind inhabitants of the valley,

from the sunken sockets

of a porter’s eyes where

magnificent draggers of Himal have grown,

from the obscene columns

of a magazine on frozen peaks of Himal,

printed from the evil ink donated

by some treacherous NGO,

from the bedroom of trekking couple,

about to reach an orgasm in unison,

from the bleeding eye of  a folksinger

in love with local Sahu’s  daughter,

from the prow of a ferry

scurrying over surface to measure its secrets,

from the tip of the fishtail

where lamblike sun bounces defunct,

from the unfinished draft

of this poem that I tear off

to look at the blue

of the Eye-lake, Fewa.