Samkutty Pattomkary
Translated from Malayalam by Sreekala Sivasankaran
1. Sea Horses in the Memories
When the blue doors open
Mother cries in the tender coconut shell
Like a pecked out navel
Novel rhythm oozes
The dalit pastor screams
To the bud-rotten cross
Let the leaves sprout
Would become the tree
Says the cross
Water-drunk virgin soil
The devil-spat holy land
As the eyes are cooled by covering
On the swing of the river stem
Little mynahs singing
Crying songs
Not to throw away
Not to break
Not even to be the oil stains
Birth-strung is this
Stirring sea cry:
Oh, amman and ammi have
Abandoned..
2. Louse writes love letter
In the wild beauty of
your braided hair
A louse is crawling, lady
In your moving mouth
A tooth is aching
You’re thinking
For the saint, louse is a resource
For you, a ‘ damn it’
For the ass, a cry
For the old man, a desolation
For the dog, a whole coconut
The louse in your head lines
Writes a love letter
You may scratch it as you please.
3. Walking
Walking is a whirlwind
Otherwise,
How these thousand miles are created in my room?
Walking is chagrin of the river
Of the grammatically wrong language
Standing on the right leg
The left leg-pencil draws the circle
Yet walking is no monotony
Of the lonely movement of the compass
Its philosophical source
The nest protected by the branch.
~
Samkutty Pattomkary is an artist and theater director based in Thrissur, Kerala. He writes poems in Malayalam
Sreekala Sivasankaran is a poet, writer and translator based in Kottayam, Kerala
