Innuendo in the Cinema Theatre - Prakriti Foundation poetry win

This is like flashback. Going back to recount something from 2009. And a good thing that brought my 2009 to a enthusiastic close. My poem "Innuendo in the Cinema Theatre" won the 2nd prize for the 2009 Prakriti Foundation open contest. Prakriti Foundation, Chennai, is

"interested in hearing the many voices of interest that make up the diverse culture of India. The foundation wishes to share information and wisdom that many of the giant scholars of India and abroad have to give us"...

The contest was part of its Poetry with Prakriti program. You can read all the three winners here.

My poem is pasted below:

"Innuendo in the Cinema Theatre"

For Robert Hass

This a story of two opponents

who face each other, count

silence with just an ‘ahem’.

One guesses very well

something hanky panky

went on indoors, curtained;

while the sheepish other

is embarrassed but sure that

his mate of henna beard

has cheated behind his back.

They believe, she can see,

love and kingdom is a game.

The trot of the horses and

the thundering canons are

only a few of the things

that make her chest rise

higher than the hillside on

the tremulous silver screen.

With this scene where

Satyajit Ray’s chess player

is caught unbuttoned

after returning back to

the game from a quick

love tiff with his silly wife,

the girl knows there will

never be such parables

for her even in the twilight.

In the story, trumpets play

in technicolour hands

hundred horns hoot away.

The magnificent blare

ascertains someone has

cheated and yet, has won.

Men and parodied mules,

women fleeing with babies,

roll like a carriage song.

It remains unclear who

will blink first to disentangle

overtures with their hands.

The script is in a language

she speaks but is remote

for an innuendo in her heart.

Elephants in gold brocades,

climactic chatter, tingly rosewater,

turn her lips butterfly wings

because she will see them

again and again on a screen

of her unbridled dreams.

Lastly, the soldiers march

in and the players stare:

two split fish stranded

unable to remember any

moments of lovemaking

or cheating on a pawn.

They half-rise, she waits.

Her lover leaves through

a door he takes with him:

like shadows mingling dark,

countries drawn in lines,

the two separate.

I wrote to Robert Hass in utmost excitement through his poet wife Brenda Hillman and this is what he wrote back after seeing my poem (my dedication refers to Hass' poem "Heroic Simile"):

"Thanks for your dedication and congratulations on your prize. Your
poem is very poignant to me. It gets at something about the way movies
place the world before (us) as a source of meditation, at the same time that
we are helpless before the way its images enter us. Good luck with
your future work.

Robert Hass"

That's a good opening to 2010 I guess, since his reply came on Jan 4. And know what, Trillium Magazine, where I had submitted nearly a year ago, suddenly sent me a mail saying they'd accept all the poems I had submitted. Now more on that later.

Image from the Internet: film poster of Shatranj ke Khiladi (The Chess Players) by Satyajit Ray