CHOPS OF MEAT/sreekumar kariyad

A black beetle rips up

All the poems written about him

In the world

The history of its simple life

Consisted of flying

In and out of the flowers

Is now scattered around

Like chops of meat

An ancient Chinese poet’s poem

On the beauty of its shell

Gave it solace

He has copied the blackness

Of his unknown grandpa

The two lines of an African poem

( Two lines only )

Praising the large tubes

Sucking honey

Made him more pleasant.

THE THINGS GUSHING AND SOLIDIFYING

I haven’t read a book that Anandan has read.
And Anandan hasn’t read a book I have read.
How Anandan can read the books
my father brought from Madras?
It has 678 pages and an owl in the back jacket.
The copy of the book, I read by myself
And pecked by the crows at last
Is not available even at the British Library.
And this is not unfamiliar to Anandan
Because, Anandan’s living space is beyond my ignorance
In a house transformed into stone throughout cogitation.
Recalling me occasionally
Like a silverfish twirling in aquarium,
Hearing my far blabbering through the other ear,
Supposing that a crow-like cloud
Can devour a tree which has owl-face and 678 branches.
Anandan sitting in octangle
In the shape of ocean staggered left and right-
Anandan, the first of the world who become
the globe while sleeping.
( translated by K.P.Ramesh)

THE THINGS GUSHING AND SOLIDIFYING

I haven’t read a book that Anandan has read.
And Anandan hasn’t read a book I have read.
How Anandan can read the books
My father brought from Madras?
It has 678 pages and an owl in the back jacket.
The copy of the book, I read by myself
And pecked by the crows at last
Is not available even at the British Library.
And this is not unfamiliar to Anandan
Because, Anandan’s living space is beyond my ignorance
In a house transformed into stone throughout cogitation.
Recalling me occasionally
Like a silverfish twirling in aquarium,
Hearing my far blabbering through the other ear,
Supposing that a crow-like cloud
Can devour a tree which has owl-face and 678 branches.
Anandan sitting in octangle
In the shape of ocean staggered left and right-
Anandan, the first of the world who become
the globe while sleeping.
(translated from malayalam by K.P.Ramesh )