A.Ayyappan (1949-2010), Malayalam poet, is distinguished for his poetic style characterized by a strict economy of expression, elliptical silences and unusual imagery. His themes evince an empathy with the oppressed, and his poetic voice loses no opportunity to castigate centres and discourses of power with virulent irony. Ayyappan had lived an outsider’s life, anarchic in its flouting of the conventions of society that schools and prunes an individual into an obedient citizen. His poems also offer insights into this ‘bohemian’ life style for which he was known during his life time. According to one commentator, Ayyappan’s poems express the discomforts of a refugee life that has become a celebration. He has over a dozen collections of poems to his credit, and was the recipient of the prestigious Asan Poetry Prize (2010) and the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award (1999).

 

 

Translated from Malayalam by Prathap Kamath

Distance

I wrote her name

on the peak of the rock.

I sensed the rough grief of the rock.

I drank wild honey

in her memory

till it got sour.

I threw the elephant-tail-hair ring

in the river that flowed

to the ocean

from the presence of the mountain.

I remembered the sights

she pointed at that day:

see, a blind owl

sheep that lose their way.

She was all ears:

listen, from where could be coming

the lamentation of Ramanan?*

* Ramanan is the eponymous protagonist of the pastoral elegy by Malayalam poet Changampuzha. Chandrika is the woman who ditches him in love. This leads to his suicide.

End of a Flesh Eater’s Day

Cacti are not grown

in the courtyard of a fascist.

Because

he can never

pluck it out of himself.

He brings rains

on the cacti

promising rainbows,

making virtuous people clouds.

Without giving

the lamp in the pot

and the pearl from the sea

Satan is preparing to leave

sinning

etching with thorn

on the hearts of friends.

A woman laughs of a broken heart

seeing the infant dipped

in molten tar

turned into a pigeon flying;

someone cuts a human form

out of a map.

I bury this man’s words

in the cemetery

of language.

The mad girl sweeps

shadows of leaves

out of the moonlight on the street.

 

 Feathers

On the rock

did

the sculptor sculpt

the epistle of love.

With a chisel

in a tongue of dark power

over the heights none else could reach.

It shall be forever

the mark he dedicated

to love.

When the rock bursts

you shall get

a piece of this love-epistle.

Only one bird flies

to read the inscription on the rock.

In his deep sleep

this bird shall nest

in the cage of the sculptor’s heart;

a dove

that fell as a bird of blood

on the earth

from the rock.

At dawn

on the sculptor’s bed

he shall first see

a white feather.

And a bloody feather.

 

 The Journey of Death

There was a death

today.

It pained me

like the bite of a black scorpion.

The neighbour, an Alsatian,

killed my Ammu.

I held the dead Ammu

close to my breast

when the house became a cobweb

on the death of the lamb.

I looked at the calluses formed long back

from not caressing with nails.

I cried over bygone deaths

forgetting

birth is a weeping

and death a smile.

I did not write poetry looking up the calendar.

This is death

to me.

The cat is not an animal to me.

A bird

that flew away

losing life

leaving me.

 

 Sumangali

(The married Hindu woman)

We were made

of the same earth.

Our blood flowed in union

like a rivulet

from the day we breathed.

Our kites flew

at the same altitude.

Toy boats rowed

at the same speed.

The paper parrots said:

we would grow up soon;

we would wed and make home.

The river that flowed away

and the torn away paper parrots

bear no witness today.

The childhood has gone to the river bank,

the adolescence to the burden of darkness.

I broke your glass bangle

on a day

when light had deserted the mind.

That splinter is a slit vein.

The pomegranate we watered shrivelled away.

Did you know

that our peacock feather

had delivered a hundred babies?

 

The Female Bird

This is the carcass of a bird

seen and forgotten somewhere long back.

She is unknown to Salim Ali*

Only Rituparna** can count

the hues and number of the feathers

of this bird.

Unknown

the tribe of the bird

or the distance flown;

what use Salim Ali raking his brains!

The bird might be

one that was lost in youth

being the dream in the crib

the curiosity of childhood

playmate of adolescence.

There is a story too

in the name of this female bird.

That she was the one who killed

the shepherd Ramanan***

under the false name of Chandrika.

They say her

beak reddened drinking blood.

*Indian ornithologist.

** In Mahabharata, a king of Ayodhya and master mathematician.

*** Ramanan is the eponymous protagonist of the pastoral elegy by Malayalam poet

Changampuzha. Chandrika is the woman who ditches him in love. This leads to his         suicide.

 

 The Flowers in the Jail Yard

I was sentenced to a term in jail.

There were four others in the cell

who were lifers.

My punishment was for

forbidden company

drinking the euphoria of forgetfulness

seeing from the mountain-top

people fighting in the valley

and leading fellowmen

to the good path.

They looked with contempt,

smiled with their canines

without roaring, at me

who had only a few days

to spend in the cell.

‘Somebody has come to serve a term in jail’ –

this was the intent of their contempt.

For my ignorance about the fact

that there can be a life of pleasure in the cell

the black walls and the khaki shirts

saw me as a fool.

The discovery of India

the letters by a father to his daughter

and the diary scribbled at the prison

had given me such an idea.

The convicts have to work

to earn the wheat they eat.

The barber’s trade for the barber

stitching for the tailor.

I thought I would get

reading and writing to do.

What I got was an order to water plants:

the small pox smelling chrysanthemums

the burning chethi

Hibiscus

Kanakaambaram

Karuka.

I gave the rose a kiss

without plucking, unseen.

The white mosanta that smiles

in the moonlight

when I look through the bars.

I watered all plants.

I put a seed from the sunflower

where it should grow.

I watered it.

Checked if the seed sprouted.

The day of my release came.

My name was called.

The plants danced in the wind.

All the flowers looked at me.

Hai

the seed of my sunflower had sprouted.

 

 The Mind of the Water

The fishes ask:

Is our fate to die in this water?

Know the distance from the water

in the aquarium

to the ocean?

The sea has a cave too.

The gold fish swims

in the depth of the sea

with the single eyed whirlpool,

hoodwinking the fisherman

breaking nets.

Break

the glass cage.

The water of the rains shall sing

the river water shall sing

the sea shall sing

never shall sing my lake.

From this water of silence

where the air of life sinks dry

through the electricity cheating on its promise

to the voicing ocean,

to the water’s mind,

else

to the boiling oil.

 

The Poems of Anna Akhmatova

 I

You led us

like a shooting star in the dark

through pathlessness.

You had never been a feeling of comfort.

II

Fame swam like a swan

in snow the hue of gold.

But you, love,

had always been my despair.

III

Your content sister

exhibits herself

in the bookshelf.

Above you the shards of the constellation

beneath you the charcoal of the fireplace.

How much did you wish to live!

How much did you pray!

How much did you fear the scorching fire!

Still

your body trembled with shock all on a sudden.

A voice that was flying away cursed me.

At the same time

the pine trees started quarrelling

and reflecting in the depths

of the lakes of moonlight.

Beside the bone house

around the flames

the most sacred spring

started dancing in circles.

 

The Surgery

Ekalavya

you are missing.

Are you even now

lost in the making of Drona’s statue?

Has your thumb, the part of knowledge, grown again?

Ekalavya, where are you today?

The tribe seeks your dark body.

You bring back to mind the blanket

given by the ancient age of frost

in the smrtis.

Come Ekalavya

this is the action-time of your riot.

Break the sculpture you make

recast it into a beast

never remember reverently the teacher.

Destroy its five senses

shooting arrows.

 

The Terrified Wolf

 

I am the lamb forsaken by the wolf.

Despite polluting the water

not even a single tooth of class animosity

has stuck in me.

Eyes magnificently angry saw not

my intense, timid

and throbbing mind.

My taste is alienated here.

I am beckoned again to the meadows.

The green leaves shivered

for me in the wind,

the river and the forest

were all ears for my scream.

The vulture flew low

for my leftovers.

Are my eyes those that see deception,

is this the day dream of a foolish pastime;

through the darkness that fills the eyes

through the smooth covering of lamb-skin

I see the wolf.

Instead of the wrathful eyes of a death

I see closing eyes.

The taste of a tender blade of grass fills my tongue.

The defiled rivulet

flowed clear water.

Fear gave refuge.

(I realized later that

the wolf had spared me

because I was a lamb marked for sacrifice.)

 

 the word of death

death has only

one word;

come, let’s go.

death

is guest;

the host has to give.

his heartbeats

sight

legs that are to forget walking.

walk after the buffalo

that flies to the sky

don’t look back into life

those who loved and spurned  you

would all fall on your corpse weeping.

the golden throne in the heaven

has rusted away.

in the hell

for you

fire and boiling water

also there is the necklace

that crawled away from the neck of god.

death, dear guest

I have only one word:

come from the life of wants.

Translated from Malayalam by Prathap Kamath