Black Swan by M Mohankumar (2026)
ISBN 978-93-6095-793-3
AuthorPress, New Delhi Pp 78 Price Rs 295

What strikes a reader going through M Mohankumar's Black Swan, his eleventh volume of poetry, is the profusion of literary and mythological allusions that he has seamlessly woven into the rich fabric of his poesy. 

So we  have Orpheus and Ophelia, Puck and Perdita, Dante and Beatrice, Hecuba and Gandhari, Vyasa and King  David, Yudhishtira and the dog, all brought in to add color and luster to his tapestry. None of them out of place, none of them  jutting out, just easing into his verbal milieu without any rough edge whatsoever.

Take for instance his ‘Flowers in the Arboretum,’  a walk through a botanical garden that makes him reflect on flowers he saw there, ‘row after row, as far as the eye can see,’  and helps him to  juxtapose  timeless myths with classic literature.

Seeing the vast expanse of flowers in front of him, he exclaims: 

‘I am stunned. Who is the poet  who said
that a lovely flower is a heavenly nymph
come down to savour the joys of earth:
its dusk and dreams, its rapture of music? 

At the same time he also remembers Ophelia, one of the most tragic of Shakespeare’s women characters, who in a state of distraught mind following the accidental death of her father at the hands of her lover, disjointedly speaks about various flowers and their assumed characteristics:

‘There is rosemary, that is for remembrance. 
And there is pansies, that is for thought. 
There is fennel for you and columbines.’

And Perdita, from The Winter’s Tale, tells her guests: 

‘Here’s flowers for you,
Hot lavender, mints, savoury, marjoram;
the marigold that goes to bed with the sun
and with him rises weeping.’

And remembering the tiny purple flower with magical charm that is plucked by Puck, his mind goes for universal brotherhood when he asks: 

‘Will there be a flower, or plant, in some 
far off mountain peak, still undiscovered,
that could drive out the inner demons
troubling mankind?’

The anthology also stands out for the way in which the author occasionally blends eastern and western mythology or literature to bring out something incongruously novel. Like the bringing together of Hecuba, Gandhari and Draupadi in the poem ‘Hecuba’s Sorrow.’

‘Was there ever a woman who suffered 
as much as she did, and so undeservedly?’ 

he asks about Hecuba and proceeds to say that Gandhari lost her one hundred sons,  ‘but they were wicked,’ Draupadi lost her sons at the moment of victory, but she had her husbands to turn to for solace. 

‘Hecuba’s  sorrow was unequalled.
Dogged by misfortune, caught in a war 
that raged on for years, she lost everything:
Her husband, her children, her status,
Ilium burned, and with it her future.
Unhinged by sorrow, she wandered
On the seashore, barking like a dog.’

Similar to the grief of these mothers was the grief of two fathers that finds poetic expression in this anthology. The inconsolable grief of Sage Vyasa over the death of his son Suka, who merged with the brahman at an early age, and the grief of King David over the death of his son Absalom. Though there was similarity in the paternal grief depicted, there was a sea of difference if one was to juxtapose Suka and Absalom. Suka, the name meaning  parrot, was an enlightened one right from birth but Absalom was guilty of fratricide and later had dethroned his father, King David, and wrested power of the country. 

While Vyasa 
‘weeps bitter tears
and wanders about the mountain peak
where his son had sat in deep meditation’

a dazed King David laments 

‘Would I had died for you,
O Absalom, my son, my son.’ 

At that moment the kindly King had only undying love for his once darling son, all the villainy  and rancor of the son buried forever.

As in his earlier anthologies many of the poems here also had an autobiographical streak. Like the nostalgic piece on his handsome grandfather- sailor who instilled in him a childhood fancy for seafaring if only to find sirens and mermaids, and the freedom from suffocation he felt on superannuation  when he ‘took off the grey buttoned-up / coat and hung it in the closet.’

‘For years I had worn it
Stiff, tight, round the neck, 
the well-worn Business Rules
stuffed into the breast-pocket.

It was unalterable. Now I can
breathe in lungfuls of air,
speak my mind, voice my 
feelings, laugh my heart out.’

Needless to say his love for literature is evident throughout the anthology as from the many allusions he has employed in his poems. The pinnacle of this may be found in the poet himself taking up the role of Shakespeare’s Prospero for making an autobiographical narrative.

‘This is the hour of contemplation.
The daylight is fading. I’m sitting here,
In my library (which I prized, still prize, 
more than my dukedom) poring over 
a book of ancient lore.’

His desire is to hand over charge of his dukedom to his brother and then retire to a distant, peaceful village

‘rid of the trappings of royalty,  carrying 
with me the few books I cherish, there 
to mingle with the simple folk, 
sharing their joys and sorrows.’

Thinking of the time spent in the magical island where he was helped a lot by the ‘delicate Ariel, that fine spirit,’  and ‘that thing of darkness’  Caliban, he sad:

‘And sometimes 
an urge comes – an unignorable urge-
to revisit that island, to summon 
those spirits, and spend a few hours 
in their delightful company. I wish 
I had not buried those books and the staff,
And I still possessed that potent art.’

The title poem of the anthology seeks to proclaim that color of the skin has nothing to with character and caliber.

Colour is nothing but a pigment, skin-deep.
Black swans or white, they are all
the same – in shape, structure,
grace of movement; the way
they swim or drift, gliding on like
little sailing boats, the way they fly,
high up in the sky, neck stretched
wings flapping, slow and rhythmic
in neat V formations.

The poem which makes an oblique reference to the adverse comments on a dark skinned dancer of Kerala, concludes saying

‘Sometimes a black swan may excel 
a white one. Think of Krishna,
The dark one, an excellent dancer.’

In the very first poem in his first anthology ‘Pearl Diver’ (1998),  Mohankumar had spoken about the way he came to write poetry in his late official career as a top civil servant. (An IAS officer, he retired as Chief Secretary to  Government of Keralam).

‘In this room am I lonely?
Not really. I am in lively company.
For they come flocking into my  mind,
Like a flock of sheep. Words,
To give utterances to thoughts.’

Those were the early days of  what can be described as spontaneous outbursts of poetry. According to a poem in this anthology, that  spontaneity was found scarcer in later days.

‘It was not like this in the past,’ he says nostalgically in the poem ‘I Have Waited For Days.’

‘In the past, in those early days,
It came unsought and stayed on,
though I tried to shrug it off. 
And the words came gushing, falling into
into lines, and took shape as poem.

But now, he sits for hours before the screen page, typing and deleting, over and over again. At last he resigns to a final understanding:

‘They say it will come unsought, 
If, that is, it is pleased to come.’

The last observation seems to have proven right. ‘Black Swan’ is evidence of it, of poetry coming when it is pleased to come.