HomeIndian English Literature'The Blue Horse' by Arun Kolatkar : Original Text

‘The Blue Horse’ by Arun Kolatkar : Original Text

 

THE BLUE HORSE 

– Arun Kolatkar 

The toothless singer  

opens her mouth .  

Shorts the circuits  

in her haywire throat.  

A shower of sparks  

flies off her half-burnt tongue. 

With a face fallen in on itself 

and a black skin burnt blacker in the sun, 

the drummer goes blue in the face  

as he thumps and whacks the tambourine  

and joins the chorus in a keyless passion.  

His pockmarked half-brother  

twiddles, tweaks and twangs  

on the one-string thing.  

God’s own children  

making music. 


You turn to the priest  

who has been good enough to arrange 

that bit of sacred cabaret act at his own house  

and ask him,  

‘The singers sang of a blue horse.  

How is it then, that the picture on your wall  

shows a white one?’  

‘Looks blue to me,’  

says the priest,  

shifting a piece of betel nut  

from the left to the right of his mouth.  

And draws an end of a nutcracker  

along the underbelly of the noble animal.  

Picking on a shade of blue  

that many popular painters like to use . .  

to suggest shadow on an object otherwise white. 

The tambourine continues to beat its breast.


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