Artconcerns proudly presents two poems of the noted poet and novelist C.P.Surendran in our first ‘Offbeat’ section.

C.P.Surendran

Born in 1959 in Kerala, C.P.Surendran aka CP obtained a Masters Degree in English Literature from Delhi University. For a short period he worked as a lecturer. In 1986 he became a fulltime journalist. His novel ‘Iron Harvest’ has received many accolades from the literary circles. Currently CP is the Resident Editor of Times of India, Pune, Maharashtra.

"Highway" is the opening poem from a sequence on Bombay low life.

The second one, "Threshold", is from a 30 poem cycle, Catafalque, dedicated to CP’s father who was a writer in Malayalam and was laid low by Alzheimer's. He died last June. Catafalque forms the centrepiece of CP’s fourth volume of poetry, Portraits of the Space We Occupy, published by Harper Collins and scheduled to be released in February 2007.

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HIGH WAY

We kiss the glass burnished with our breath
Suck syllables from its blazoned face,
And wave, thinking brittle things must break
At entreating touch
Reveal armoured knights, silken
Queens wedged in their laps, teasing nipples,
Loosening purse strings,
Men, women, and crown brilliant as motives
In escutcheons flashing in the sun when charity
Was a deal our lips might have sealed.
But traffic screeches, where chariots struck fire
And our kisses fall, petals on sheets of burning brass,
We sink deep to our knees and there we rest,

And scorching our brow, cavalcade of kings pass.      

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CATAFALQUE

Threshold
 
The roses are on their own.
The grass spreads
Like water from an upturned urn.
Between mornings smudged blue like bruises  
And evenings bubbling up like blood
Along broken arteries of the sky
The road narrowing through hedgerows,
Hens, fallow fields, darkening stream,  
Slows towards home to halt
At my father's feet, far from town.
He clasps his hands over his head,
The softening crown.
 
And I see
His hands are no longer hard or brown.  
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