Look at the cloak of secrecy, what might hide within
the grey-green spires. In the blueprint of an assault,
countless flowers have fused into one, the dovetailing
whorls a labyrinth for seekers.
Covet this wild crown; ignore its waxy battlements.
Snub the pricks in your quest, getting closer to the truth.
Armed with strange love, cut through its armour,
everything that restrains change.
Shed of weight, it weeps gently,
the air suffused with fermenting sweetness.
Cut further along its flanks, bind in diagonal
its many eyes, one by one.
Sightless, it yields under a resolute sun —
observe the wedges lined with tiny honeytraps,
prepare for a counter-charge on your senses.
— Soni Somarajan
Stitching his memories into a collection of sixty-four poems titled First Contact, Soni Somarajan writes, ‘No acid build,/ just the kick of fleeting feet. / I almost fly. / Wait. / I can’t catch up -/whispers my wheelchair.’ These lines are from his Dream Selfie, which is an excellent photographic recording of a dream, recollected the next morning. But it is the adjacent poem which hooked me into Soni’s poetry collection. The poem is titled Ode to a Pineapple.
Soni lives in Thiruvananthapuram and is a poet, copywriter, editor and content consultant, whose poems have been featured in magazines, anthologies and newspapers. He was a former Associate Editor (Poetry) at Yavanika Press and was also Poetry Editor at The Bombay Literary Magazine.
Waltzing back to Ode to a Pineapple, the poem maps the slicing of a pineapple. The knife slashes the ‘cloak of secrecy’ which hides within ‘the grey-green spires’. Soni describes the pathway which unfolds as a ‘labyrinth for seekers’. Cutting and slicing the hard fruit, one dovetails with hidden mysteries. But the truth, as you go deep inside, Soni warns, ‘pricks’.
Even then, ‘Armed with strange love, cut through its armour, everything that restrains change.’
The pineapple, ‘shed of weight’, weeps. The air is sweet and fragrant. The assault does not end. The knife goes down, further along ‘its many eyes, one by one’. The poet steps back only after warning the reader of ‘a counter-charge on your senses’, as its wedges are all ‘lined with tiny honeytraps’.
The keen observation skill possessed by a poet is evident in the detailing of the fruit. After Soni, pineapple is no longer a fruit on the table. It is a piece of poetic imagination which has fed our senses to the full.
Beyond that, this fruit-poem gently knocks one into ruminations on love. Oh yes, a fruit did bring misery into a passionate garden, once upon a time! Love is a mystery until it is wounded. Slowly, it is disrobed, probed, pricked and then pushed into blind alleys. Breathing and birthing a sweet, fragrant air, love surrenders sightlessly.
But be prepared for a counter-attack, counsels the poet! Well, I must also remind you that Soni is a graduate in Hotel Management. And he specialises in fruits. Soni’s poems on jackfruit, mango, guava and wild jack appease your soul, and give you enough to crave for a bite of the fruit.
(The writer is a poet, translator and assistant professor of English at BCM College, Kottayam)