Ye, ancient tales
that once cast shadow tents
along the blue grassland* trails
Satis
who dived into every drop of pyre
to seize a thousand suns
Stiff blocks, tough to the chisel
Young shoots ignorant of the tang of soil
Drifters that mount every wind, go begging
Ye, uprooted states
swaying on to ramble
and, there
one day…
slurring
couldn’t ye’ve gone
with a ‘see ye ‘gain’?
Omigaaaawd,**
if the proletariat Kerala came
as per the projected target
weren’t these the ones
who would have lasted
to turn into great forests wild,
Alas!
swaaayiiiing-oooon-to-raaaamble….
theeereeeee….
*Lines from the elegy written by Kumaran Asan, the great renaissance poet of Malayalam, in remembrance of A.R. Rajaraja Varma, a pioneer of Malayalam linguistics and a poet-critic who contributed substantially to the formation of modern Malayalam language and literature in the beginning of the 20th century. In the Sloka which includes the quoted line, the poet describes his predecessor as a giant mango tree casting shadow tents along the blue grassland and feeding and protecting the lives around. The mango tree in question is an actual tree that survives to this day in the courtyard of the University College, Thiruvananthapuram, and there used to be an ‘Under the Mango Tree Gang’ comprising writers, artists and thinkers, down the generations, over almost a hundred years. The poet also belongs to that group, whose alma mater is the University College.
** Oh my God!!
A LULLABY
(To my son Ambu)
Up in the sky
a cradle
a crescent
the cradle crescent
for the dear li’l boy
a crescent
a cradle
the crescent cradle
to sleep
a very sleepy
sleep in the sky.
The tip of a vine,
a joyful moonlight vine
strung on a bough
a pretty moonlight bough
Wrapped in a silk a
soft moonlight silk
Riding on a swing
a folksong moonlight swing
Rocking in the sky
in a cradle
in a crescent
in the cradle crescent
the dear li’l boy
slept on till ‘twas dawn
a sleep a
sleepy sleep
a very sleepy sleep
up in the sky.
ALAS!
It’s on either side of the same hour
that we fell dead
Then, mounting the elephant dark,
I to hell
Riding the sun’s chariot,
you to heaven
In hell
I got the job of shutting up souls in the cells
In heaven
yours was sweeping up of souls
If we were at the same place
we could have at least caught
glimpses of each other
amid our chores
Alas!
Translated from Malayalam by Rizio Yohannan Raj
Contributor:
ANVAR. A Malayalam poet of the present generation. Has published a collection of poems Mazhakkalam, which won the the Kanakasree Award of the Kerala Sahitya Academi in the year 2000. He is also engaged in script writing in the field of cinema.
Translator:
RIZIO YOHANNAN RAJ. Promising young poet and novelist with numerous publications to her credit. Is editor with Navneeth Publications, Mumbai.
