Poetry International Poetry International
Poem

Jeet Thayil

Nativism

Nativism

Nativism

At 48, the youngest
director in the history of the Civil
Center for Falconry,
Universal Understanding & Aesthetic
Interest,
he published The Spiritual Uses of Oneiric
Travel
. It was wartime,
but there’s little trace of conflict
in this odd and beautiful collection
of travel jottings, doodles, and rhyme.
“Everywhere in the old city
there was dread,
a sense of ancient
sympathy,
of inebriated spirits taking the dead,
imperial government
to task, while its citizenry
and civil
servants slept.”
In subsequent decades, he refined his view
of history as the art of the impassable.
He wrote that his goal had been
to be wholly adept
at transference, “a bridge between
thought and its correct
articulation.”
When the government fell he lost his new
stipend, a palpable
loss, and he went home to die.
It was his last
act of secular defiance.
Varanasi, inauspicious
in the new theology, was a dry
tiered place of souls
whose chance on earth had passed,
who concerned themselves
with “a wider world, a suspicious
heritage,
a secure context for the cosmic dance,
a swift descent, a dangerous old age.”
Close

Nativism

At 48, the youngest
director in the history of the Civil
Center for Falconry,
Universal Understanding & Aesthetic
Interest,
he published The Spiritual Uses of Oneiric
Travel
. It was wartime,
but there’s little trace of conflict
in this odd and beautiful collection
of travel jottings, doodles, and rhyme.
“Everywhere in the old city
there was dread,
a sense of ancient
sympathy,
of inebriated spirits taking the dead,
imperial government
to task, while its citizenry
and civil
servants slept.”
In subsequent decades, he refined his view
of history as the art of the impassable.
He wrote that his goal had been
to be wholly adept
at transference, “a bridge between
thought and its correct
articulation.”
When the government fell he lost his new
stipend, a palpable
loss, and he went home to die.
It was his last
act of secular defiance.
Varanasi, inauspicious
in the new theology, was a dry
tiered place of souls
whose chance on earth had passed,
who concerned themselves
with “a wider world, a suspicious
heritage,
a secure context for the cosmic dance,
a swift descent, a dangerous old age.”

Nativism

Sponsors
Gemeente Rotterdam
Nederlands Letterenfonds
Stichting Van Beuningen Peterich-fonds
Prins Bernhard cultuurfonds
Lira fonds
Versopolis
J.E. Jurriaanse
Gefinancierd door de Europese Unie
Elise Mathilde Fonds
Stichting Verzameling van Wijngaarden-Boot
Veerhuis
VDM
Partners
LantarenVenster – Verhalenhuis Belvédère