In the Bhagavad Gita there is the line, Moths rushing full tilt to their ruin fly right into an inferno (11.29). Some moths are content simply to sit on Sanskrit dictionaries and absorb meanings by osmosis. Like this one who is meditating on the ramifications of gola: a widow's bastard. How many hatreds are woven into that meaning? A little further down, off the page as it were is the meaning: a woman's female friend. Astrologically it occurs when all the planets are in a single sign.
I began learning Sanskrit in 2007 and at first I found the task daunting. Now I expect it to challenge me and sometimes defeat me, all the same the climb is worth the view.
Sanskrit
This rock wall is perpendicular–
she scrambles for a foothold
a tiny jutting of rock to grab onto.
The language is perpendicular–
the roots elude her, the gerunds
are thick with meaning and she slips
and falls crashing to the ground.
Picking herself up, she climbs
a conjugation, declines a declension
all the while, the endings are tangling.
Seven mountains she has crossed, each
one higher than the last. The participles
present not too much challenge, but
the passive is aggressive. Now and then
she has etymological epiphanies,
blinding insight and then finds
it was the wrong form, the wrong verb,
an unknown Vedic version.
She has taken to reading the dictionary
forwards, backwards, horizontally and
vertically, even then the sandhi–
internal and external–takes her on
another spin down the rock wall.
Falling is easy, she hopes she never lands.
This poem was performed as aerials and text on 4 May 2008 at Community of Selves, a collaboration between Suzanne Bellamy and Susan Hawthorne held in Northcote. It was later published in Sinister Wisdom.
