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
anoop said:
At last I ‘get’ Ayyappan. Strangely, in English, he seems more accessible. Thanks sir.