Srikanth Reddy QUOTES

1 " Fundamentals of Esperanto

The grammatical rules of this language can be learned in one
sitting.

Nouns have no gender & end in -o; the plural terminates in -oj
& the accusative, -on

Amiko, friend; amikoj, friends; amikon & amikojn, accusative
friend & friends.

Ma amiko is my friend.

A new book appears in Esperanto every week. Radio stations in
Europe, the United States, China, Russia & Brazil broadcast in
Esperanto, as does Vatican Radio. In 1959, UNESCO declared the
International Federation of Esperanto Speakers to be in accord with
its mission & granted this body consultative status. The youth
branch of the International Federation of Esperanto Speakers, UTA,
has offices in 80 different countries & organizes social events where
young people curious about the movement may dance to recordings
by Esperanto artists, enjoy complimentary soft drinks & take home
Esperanto versions of major literary works including the Old
Testament & A Midsummer Night’s Dream. William Shatner’s first
feature-length vehicle was a horror film shot entirely in Esperanto.
Esperanto is among the languages currently sailing into deep space
on board the Voyager spacecraft.

-

Esperanto is an artificial language
constructed in 1887 by L.
L. Zamenhof, a polish
oculist.

following a somewhat difficult period
in my life. It was twilight & snowing on the
railway platform just outside
Warsaw where I had missed
my connection. A man in a crumpled track suit
& dark glasses pushed a cart
piled high with ripped & weathered volumes—

sex manuals, detective stories, yellowing
musical scores & outdated physics textbooks,
old copies of Life, new smut,
an atlas translated,
a grammar, The Mirror, Soviet-bloc comics,
a guide to the rivers &
mountains, thesauri, inscrutable

musical scores & mimeographed physics books,
defective stories, obsolete sex manuals—
one of which caught my notice
(Dr. Esperanto
since I had time, I traded
my used Leaves of Grass for a copy.

I’m afraid I will never be lonely enough.
There’s a man from Quebec in my head,

a friend to the purple martins.
Purple martins are the Cadillac of swallows.
All purple martins are dying or dead.
Brainscans of grown purple martins suggest
these creatures feel the same levels of doubt

& bliss as an eight-year-old girl in captivity.
While driving home from the brewery
one night this man from Quebec heard a radio program
about purple martins & the next day he set out
to build them a house
in his own back yard. I’ve never built anything,
let alone a house,

not to mention a home
for somebody else.

Never put in aluminum floors to smooth over the waiting.
Never piped sugar water through colored tubes
to each empty nest lined with newspaper shredded
with strong, tired hands.
Never dismantled the entire affair

& put it back together again.
Still no swallows.
I never installed the big light that stays on through the night

to keep owls away. Never installed lesser lights,
never rested on Sunday

with a beer on the deck surveying
what I had done
& what yet remained to be done, listening to Styx
while the neighbor kids ran through my sprinklers.
I have never collapsed in abandon.
Never prayed.
But enough about the purple martins.
Every line of the work
is a first & a last line & this is the spring

of its action. Of course, there’s a journey
& inside that journey, an implicit voyage
through the underworld. There’s a bridge

made of boats; a carp stuffed with flowers;
a comic dispute among sweetmeat vendors;
a digression on shadows;

That’s how we finally learn
who the hero was all along. Weary & old,

he sits on a rock & watches his friends
fly by one by one out of the song,
then turns back to the journey they all began

long ago, keeping the river to his right. "

― Srikanth Reddy , Facts for Visitors

3 " Then the pulse.
Then a pause.
Then twilight in a box.
Dusk underfoot.
Then generations.

—

Then the same war by a different name.
Wine splashing in the bucket.
The erection, the era.
Then exit Reason.
Then sadness without reason.
Then the removal of the ceiling by hand.

—

Then pages & pages of numbers.
Then the page with the faint green stain.
Then the page on which Prince Theodore, gravely wounded,
is thrown onto a wagon.
Then the page on which Masha weds somebody else.
Then the page that turns to the story of somebody else.
Then the page scribbled in dactyls.
Then the page which begins Exit Angel.
Then the page wrapped around a dead fish.
Then the page where the serfs reach the ocean.
Then a nap.
Then the peg.
Then the page with the curious helmet.
Then the page on which millet is ground.
Then the death of Ursula.
Then the stone page they raised over her head.
Then the page made of grass which goes on.

—

Exit Beauty.

—

Then the page someone folded to mark her place.
Then the page on which nothing happens.
The page after this page.

Then the transcript.
Knocking within.

Interpretation, then harvest.

—

Exit Want.
Then a love story.

Then a trip to the ruins.
Then & only then the violet agenda.

Then hope without reason.
Then the construction of an underground passage between us.


Srikanth Reddy, "Burial Practice" from Facts for Visitors. Copyright © 2004 by the Regents of the University of California. Reprinted by permission of The University of California Press.
Source: Facts for Visitors (University of California Press, 2004) "

― Srikanth Reddy , Facts for Visitors