By Eileen Wingard
SAN DIEGO — Nelson Heller and Genine Rainbeau-Heart were the two featured poets at the Jewish Poets-Jewish Voices program Tuesday evening, March 22, at the Astor Judaica Library.
With one of the original programmed poets absent due to illness, the open microphone segment was extended. The well-attended audience was rewarded with Rainbeau-Heart’s original poems and Heller’s travelogues, in addition to poetry by audience members, several of whom will surely be invited to read their poetry at future evenings in this ongoing series.
Examples of the featured poets’ work is below:
Home Garden Studio
by Genine Rainbeau-Heart
There is something
about the smell
of turpinoid
that let’s me know
that I’m alive
and have done something
real.
In my garden
I did it.
Into the moisture laden evening
at 5 something
on the 29th day
of February—
I inhaled deeply.
Face towards canvas—
which rested
beneath the eave
and atop the flat file
that remains protected
under plastic and
fiber woven tarp—
I took in the reality
of that oh-so
stinky
and perfect
and vital
stuff.
Colors—
just enough.
The poetry in clouds
is sacred story fluff.
The poetry of painting–
ah, I did enough
*
Mother Ganga
By Nelson Heller
Varanasi. Said to be the oldest continuously inhabited city on earth, home to over 3 million souls not counting pilgrims and mourners.
Located in the heart of India on the banks of the Ganga, “Mother Ganga,” because it gives life to much of the nation. The British, struggling with the exotic place names, changed it to the Ganges, as they did Mumbai to Bombay and Varanasi to Benares.
Like the rest of India we’ve seen, Varanasi is humanity making do in noisy cramped alleys and dusty markets.
It is street hawkers in your face, for whom “No” is “Yes.” Beggars whose whine is perfected to break your heart. Holy men, in tattered orange robes carrying shiny metal bowls for what sustenance comes their way.
Tricycle rickshaws struggling through vendors’ carts, cows, trucks, motorcycles, bull-drawn wagons; all skirting shops, some just tiny metal compartments on stilts set on any bit of open space, or without enclosure, simply on the ground.
The open fronted fabric shop fitted out with bright lights, display cases and raised marble flooring, where a large cow, a sacred animal here, takes up most of the store dozing on the floor.
Cramped traffic circles swirling with every conceivable kind of traffic, without electric signals or police, nonetheless providing passage, including, most incredibly, to our massive tour bus.
But these are hardly what distinguishes this place, except perhaps in scale. No. The throbbing heart of Varanasi, amidst this polyglot swirl of life, is at the banks of Mother Ganga. Here ancient stone stepped embankments seething with humanity join the city with a flowing expanse of brown garbage and flower filled holiness stretching to a far flood plain on the distant horizon.
We came first in early evening as daylight faded, giving up the bus for rickshaws, the only way besides walking to get to the river. When they too could go no further we walked, running a gauntlet of outstretched hands, an ocean of humanity facing the water.
In the darkness Hindu priests at the water’s edge, incongruously spotlighted, faced crowds on the steps, waved burning torches, swayed and chanted to ritual music piped through PA systems, like a fantasia of religious rock concerts.
Girish, our guide, ushered us onto a small shallow hulled boat. Three young men poled, rowed and steered us out into the blackness of the night joining a flotilla of other boats quietly heading for an upstream bank glowing a fiery orange. Each of us was given a tiny rude float, made of a carnation blossom and burning candle centered in a paper cupcake form, to offer to the Ganga in prayer. Countless numbers of these offerings bobbed in the water, their lights filling the emptiness between boats.
Slowly, to the eerie Hindu music and periodic slosh of the oars, we came to the funeral pyres and mourners, the cremation sites of Hindus fortunate enough to leave this world from its holiest portal. A living dreamscape from Dante’s Inferno in which we were ourselves transported to the mythical river Styx.
We came again to the waterfront the following morning, before dawn, to see the sun rise out of the dusky darkness and watch the river come alive. Now people were bathing in the cold water, even swigging mouthfuls, and doing laundry by beating it against flat stones partly in the water. Male swimmers wore bathing suits or undershorts, but women wore their saris, sometimes washing them while still wearing them.
Ancient palaces built to give the privileged special vantages over the waterside formed a weird backdrop, like a bit of Venice moved to the Ganga.
Now, as the sun struggled up from the haze, the souvenir vendors came out in rowboats, tying up to the drifting tourist boats like ours, to hawk their carved ganeshas, Budas, jewelry, postcards and books about Varanasi.
For me this word picture will be my most cherished souvenir.
*
Wingard is a freelance writer who specializes in coverage of the arts. She may be contacted via eileen.wingard@sdjewishworld.com. Comments intended for the space below must be accompanied by the letter-weriter’s first and last name and by his/ her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the U.S.)