Quotes By Author: Srikanth Reddy

“I tried to cut through all our hurried centuries, lost in a forest within.Men broke by war emerged in frightful shape—more than human but also less, they were quite aware,the sovereign dead, that time is like a window opening up the sad patterns of never.As one they advanced— Lloyd George Georges ClemenceauAdolph Hitler —through history. But the past does not followso straightforward a path said I (predictably in Italian),and, burning under their masters, they proclaimedthe world a pendulum. It is possible, but this gives riseto the often-heard complaint that repetition is unavoidable. Still time issues into today,little fathers. The years, I believe, can be shaped with one’s hands.The world —its obscure moving fields, Persian tragedies,and countries in peace— I had to inform that council of the lost,remains an instrument, a valve instrument, which, when waning,is perfectly clear in the pit —and, being given to such classical conceptsas freedom and necessity, laboriously continued in the traditional way—I believe I believe.”

“Fundamentals of EsperantoThe grammatical rules of this language can be learned in onesitting.Nouns have no gender & end in -o; the plural terminates in -oj & the accusative, -on Amiko, friend; amikoj, friends; amikon & amikojn, accusativefriend & friends.Ma amiko is my friend.A new book appears in Esperanto every week. Radio stations inEurope, the United States, China, Russia & Brazil broadcast inEsperanto, as does Vatican Radio. In 1959, UNESCO declared theInternational Federation of Esperanto Speakers to be in accord withits mission & granted this body consultative status. The youthbranch of the International Federation of Esperanto Speakers, UTA,has offices in 80 different countries & organizes social events whereyoung people curious about the movement may dance to recordingsby Esperanto artists, enjoy complimentary soft drinks & take homeEsperanto versions of major literary works including the OldTestament & A Midsummer Night’s Dream. William Shatner’s firstfeature-length vehicle was a horror film shot entirely in Esperanto.Esperanto is among the languages currently sailing into deep spaceon board the Voyager spacecraft.-Esperanto is an artificial languageconstructed in 1887 by L. L. Zamenhof, a polish oculist.following a somewhat difficult periodin my life. It was twilight & snowing on the railway platform just outside Warsaw where I had missedmy connection. A man in a crumpled track suit & dark glasses pushed a cart piled high with ripped & weathered volumes—sex manuals, detective stories, yellowingmusical 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, inscrutablemusical 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 suggestthese creatures feel the same levels of doubt& bliss as an eight-year-old girl in captivity.While driving home from the breweryone night this man from Quebec heard a radio programabout purple martins & the next day he set outto build them a housein his own back yard. I’ve never built anything,let alone a house,not to mention a homefor somebody else.Never put in aluminum floors to smooth over the waiting.Never piped sugar water through colored tubesto each empty nest lined with newspaper shreddedwith 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 nightto keep owls away. Never installed lesser lights,never rested on Sundaywith a beer on the deck surveyingwhat I had done& what yet remained to be done, listening to Styxwhile 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 workis a first & a last line & this is the springof its action. Of course, there’s a journey& inside that journey, an implicit voyagethrough the underworld. There’s a bridgemade of boats; a carp stuffed with flowers;a comic dispute among sweetmeat vendors;a digression on shadows;That’s how we finally learnwho the hero was all along. Weary & old,he sits on a rock & watches his friendsfly by one by one out of the song,then turns back to the journey they all beganlong ago, keeping the river to his right.”

“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)”