Celestial

CELESTIAL

“Poetic inquiry at its finest... Celestial is a cultural gem, a mystical ludus.”

Roula-Maria Dib, Poet, Director, London Arts-Based Research Centre

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“Whether one is into stargazing for ‘frolicking with Regil Kentaurus’ or for ‘ploughing the celestial bog’, Abhay K offers love-laced couplets of stellar delight. One will read this book and find one’s poetic star.”

Ko Ko Thett, Poet, author, translator

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“In Celestial, Abhay K. transposes the unfolding drama of desire, passion, longing, restless quest, serenade, and communion from Earth into the heavens.”

Ranjit Hoskote, Poet, author

CELESTIAL a love poem

Abhay K.

First published in India in 2024 by Mapin Publishing Pvt Ltd.

706 Kaivanna, Panchvati, Ellisbridge

Ahmedabad 380006 INDIA

T: +91 79 40 228 228 • E: mapin@mapinpub.com www.mapinpub.com

Text © Abhay K.

Images: Available in the public domain.

All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

The moral rights of Abhay K. as the author of this work are asserted.

ISBN: 978-93-94501-15-7

Design: Rakesh Manger / Mapin Design Studio

Copyediting & Proofreading: Mapin Editorial

Production: Mapin Design Studio

Printed in India

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Garima Garg for encouraging me to publish this poem as an illustrated book. I am grateful to Chaitali Pandya for reading the poem carefully and offering her valuable suggestions. My gratitude to Bipin Shah for offering his valuable suggestions and publishing the book.

The thought of writing Celestial came to me during my stay in the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar from 2019 to 2022.

Antananarivo skies are clear and free from light pollution during most part of the year. I started gazing at the night sky more attentively and was duly rewarded with sightings of the planets in our solar system. I could see some prominent star constellations such as Orion, Canis Major, Taurus, Scorpius, Centaurus, Vela, Carina, Sagittarius, Libra, and bright stars such as Sirius, Canopus, Betelguese, Rigel, Aldebaran, Antares with the naked eye. This also set me on the path of writing anthems on the planets in our solar system, which were published on 21st December 2020, on the day of the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn.

Fascinated by the stories and mythologies associated with constellations, I started reading about them in depth. Once, quite late into the night I woke up from a deep sleep and looked through my window towards the sky and a poem started taking shape in my mind on seeing the constellation of Scorpius shining bright in the eastern sky.

During my university days, I had read a few lines of the poem Locksley Hall by Lord Alfred Tennyson:

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; 6

and have darker skies. Bortle Scale measures the darkness of the skies at any given location on a scale of 1 to 9. A scale of 1 means an ideal dark sky location with most of the constellations visible with the naked eye, while a scale of 9 means heavy light pollution as in the large cities.

International Dark Sky Association’s mission is “to preserve and protect the night time environment and our heritage of dark skies through quality outdoor lighting.” It does this by certifying certain places as International Dark Skies places. There are now more than 190 such places† in the world. India too has a number of dark skies places ideal for stargazing, including Pangong Lake in Ladakh, Nubra Valley in Leh, Benital in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand, Rann of Kutch in Gujarat, Neil Island in Andaman and Nicobar, among others, and the interest in astro-tourism is growing.

Darkness has its own beauty. We should preserve dark skies so that we can revel in the light of the universe.

I hope this poem inspires you to relish the beauty of starlight, and to preserve and protect our heritage of dark skies.

Abhay K. Antananarivo, Madagascar

†https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/

Note on Illustrations

This book contains illustrations of 48 constellations from the book S . uwar al-kawākib or The Book of the Fixed Stars by the renowned tenth-century Persian astronomer ‘Abd al-Rah . mān al-S . ūfī (903– 986 CE, Rayy, south-east of Tehran), known in the West as Azophi. The book was originally written in old Arabic without commas or full stops and contained illustrations, a detailed catalogue of stars, their magnitudes, colours and coordinates. Al-S . ūfī’s original manuscript has been lost, but the Bodleian Library, Oxford, has an early copy reputedly made by his son Ibn al-S ūfī 24 years after his father’s death, although it is considered a much later copy by a different author. This manuscript is known as Marsh 144 at the Bodleian Library. Incidently, Ibn al-S . ūfī also wrote a poem about the stars to make his father’s work popular. The Bibliothèque nationale de France has a manuscript of S . uwar al-kawākib that was prepared for the mathematician and astronomer Ulugh Beg of Samarkand, grandson of Tamerlane, in 1436.

Al-S . ūfī’s book was based on Ptolemy’s classic work Almagest. He updated Ptolemy’s measurements of longitudes of the stars by adding 12 degrees and 42 minutes, to accommodate precession.

I seek you in the eye of Taurus let’s ride the bull together, just the two of us (4)

I look at Hamal—the ram’s head in Aries while he grazes serenely in the celestial prairies (35)

I try tracing you in the faint light of Alrescha in Pisces love, will my search for you ever cease? (36)

I seek help of the sea goat Capricornus hoping he can unite us (56)

Abhay K. is the author of a dozen poetry collections, including Stray Poems (Poetrywala), Monsoon (Sahitya Akademi, 2022), The Magic of Madagascar (L’Harmattan Paris, 2021), The Alphabets of Latin America (Bloomsbury India, 2020), and the editor of The Book of Bihari Literature (HarperCollins, 2022), The Bloomsbury Anthology of Great Indian Poems, CAPITALS, New Brazilian Poems and The Bloomsbury Book of Great Indian Love Poems. His poems have appeared in over 100 literary magazines, including Poetry Salzburg Review, Asia Literary Review among others. His ‘Earth Anthem’ has been translated into over 150 languages. He received the SAARC Literary Award 2013 and was invited to record his poems at the Library of Congress, Washington DC in 2018. His translations from the Sanskrit of Kalidasa’s Meghaduta (Bloomsbury India, 2021) and Ritusamhara (Bloomsbury India, 2021) have won KLF Poetry Book of the Year Award 2020–21. www.abhayk.com

ART / POETRY

Celestial

A Love Poem Abhay K.

160 pages, 46 illustrations

6.75 x 8.75” (171.5 x 222 mm), hc-plc

ISBN: 978-93-94501-15-7

₹1199 | $25 | £20

“Here is the perfect companion to any stargazing app—Abhay K’s delightful poem Celestial distills the poetic wisdom of the ages in splendid rhyming couplets.”

Christopher Merrill, Poet, Director, International Writing Program, The University of Iowa

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“A litany to take us out of ourselves, into what Carl Sagan called ‘star stuff’, our ancient home!”

Gabriel Rosenstock , Poet, playwright, essayist, author, translator

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“These starry-eyed poems are born of a sorcery of voice and discovery, and strike a delicate balance between solitude and waywardness.”

Jayanta Mahapatra, Poet, translator

Celestial is a love poem of 100 rhyming couplets wherein the poet restlessly seeks his beloved, who is playing a game of hide-and-seek in the remote corners of the universe. This breathtaking poem takes you on a poetic journey to all the 88 star constellations visible from Earth and reveals the hidden mysteries of the universe. Accompanied with 46 exquisite illustrations by the tenth-century Persian astronomer ‘Abd al-Rah . mān al-S . ūfī, Celestial makes a delightful read.

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