1. Muziris
1
The one who knows the sea
unlocks a sky in the heart.
2
The old town of the rough rains
that you seek
is dead.
The alleys that once glittered
with the spark of metals
now reek of silence.
Everything returns to its origin:
earthen pots to mud,
water to the depths unraveled by the anchor,
coins to their lustre.
Nothing remains in the memory;
no more jasmine scents,
no more damsels,
roads are clogged by thorns.
Weapons,
like photographs of lightning,
became mere showpieces.
3
When the afternoon sun
becomes rooted in the earth
and the trees doze off
stretching their fingers to Periyar[1]
I remember a lost vessel
that once sailed to my shores
as natural as a mango
falling to its own earth.
With a kiss
God united us;
gazing at the night sky
we joined the stars.
Together we saw
the edge of the sky boiling in the waves.
At the doorstep of the sea
a town bloomed
stretching out
fifty-one[2] tongues.
The glory of the sun
has long drowned.
Yet the sound of the same sea
and the fate in the same stars
drip into memory.
We parted ways
in the drought after the flood
pretending nothing passed between us.
Never committed love or time,
shared dreams of the body
nor surrendered language—
Yet had you waited for me this long
on the same deck?
Like a season
nailed onto the wall of earth by some god,
had you stood unmoving
in the summer heat
and salty winds
echoing the same sea?
Many have come later in search of me—
animals, birds, fishes,
a defeated king,
corpses of toys that lost their child,
long kisses of the wind
blown into the darkness,
anchored stars waiting for their turn,
the rain.
Like lightning on the earth
time has shimmered through my bones
unknown by day and night.
Water mountains blooming wild,
shivering soil,
the madness coursing through
the flooded arteries of Periyar—
I still jolt awake
at those memories.
4
Did you confuse
the mouth of the broken pot with bangles?
Did you decipher
the scribblings of the mad foreigner to be a new language?
Dear Mr. Historian,
if you are done seducing the tourists
please be seated
to listen to this song:
As the King for the foreign deity[3]
Decreed to build a temple mighty
With the same sweat and spirit
That we set straight in merit
Ploughing sand, lifting stone and timber in mass
Building walls, fitting solid doors in brass,
The royal caste in a grand manner
Stood adorned under greed’s banner.
The lower caste soon stepped far aside
Cowering at the ‘eternal dharma’ beside
Those spaces vacated by the untouchables
Then claimed by the insatiable feudal men.
Parting the grating sea with rowing oars
Under the warmth that the summer sun pours.
In the raging winds on the wooden vessel
The goddess sways in tune with the waves’ whistle
Wearing the sacred sword and chilamb[4] chiming
The devotees utter the fucking song[5], dancing—
The procession goes on with the mother god blessing
She sinks down, the navel of the land caressing
As an offering once a Portuguese sailor
Sent a bell for the goddess in valour.
Its resounding knell became the music of the world
And on it is written in praise of his Lord,
SEIA OSANTISSIMO NOME DEIESVS LOVVADO[6]—
The bell’s untold story remains in the temple.
Why did you wipe off from the memory
the stories of Persian merchants
who waited on the shore
for goods and spices,
the farmer
who was forced to sell his black tears[7]
for almost nothing,
his skinny barren daughters
who could never climb up high
or flower?
Once a lean sailor came in from the sea.
In his dreams
blazed the vertebra of the sun,
the brain of the sky.
He left no footprints.
Ploughing the soil
he sowed his seeds
and from there grew
tombs like masks on the earth.
Hollow hearts bloomed,
the waterfall between two dreams
dammed itself,
the wings of the wild ducks drooped,
crows became the dead,
the wild smile of a heart
appeared in the midday sky,
the shivering skeleton of the sun.
Several arks came later
hunting wild stars;
Many sailors,
different seeds.
I can hear the footsteps
of those without footprints
thud
thud
spreading down
like lightning from the heart.
Dreams
fears
reflections
excitements
leave no footprints.
When your palm leaves[8]
narrate history as stories of mere conquests,
the sigh of a rotting harbour
reflects a lightning’s smile in the dark.
Buried in the earth
lie several sculptures:
Patirruppattu[9] songs,
various news from
Greece, Arabia, Persia,
a Buddha’s head wrapped in Chinese net,
the chime of death in precious stones,
cotton, food, weapons,
Iziz, Pattini, Kannaki[10]—
the women who still guard
the corpses of their husbands
in the lonely temple tunnels,
the wives who turned to stone
when the fire feasted upon the city;
the steam of their vengeance
rising from the ruins.
A big drop of wrath
covers the sky.
The world ends with water and fire.
Whose world has ended otherwise?
Birth and death—
the alpha and omega.
Yet, a turtle
with ashes in one eye
and water in the other
upholds our dreams.
Its legs hold the weariness of centuries,
the varied waters it has been through,
the fallen faces innumerable
Pallibanaperumal[11],
the crucified brought in
by Hippalus[12] through the waters,
Sankara[13]—the eternal,
Arya Sankara[14],
rural deities who turned to sand and stone,
Naga queens[15],
languages festered with smallpox,
the barge that washed ashore,
a refugee Jew,
the farmer of black tears,
the smile of death
that escaped from the salty lips of drought,
the thud thud sound
of the last beat
that dissolves in the wind
without footprints.
5
Like the song of death
spreading in the burning cabin of a ship,
the presence of sea
unfurls in the memory.
Its voice crawls into me
like the roots of a wild tree
creeping into a dead man’s ear,
like meeting one’s own future in a desert.
I burn in the rhythm of that voice.
In the fall of my life
time and wind tell me of Bilathi[16] ships
landing in Kochazhi[17]
crossing the invisible web of machines.
The sea lashes hard
against my heart,
now covered in moss.
The decayed roots of a giant tree
that had once welcomed thousands of migratory wings
lie spread on the soil.
I can hear
my name slipping into silence
my name like a huge turtle
crawling into oblivion.
In time
the wind has managed
to slowly heal the old wounds;
I leave myself open to new lashes.
The fallen doors
will open only to the sky;
their focus only on
the sun and the moon.
I can hear
the wind brushing past the waves—
ascensions
and descensions.
The one who knows the sea
unlocks a sky in the heart.
2
The old town of the rough rains
that you seek
is dead.
The alleys that once glittered
with the spark of metals
now reek of silence.
Everything returns to its origin:
earthen pots to mud,
water to the depths unraveled by the anchor,
coins to their lustre.
Nothing remains in the memory;
no more jasmine scents,
no more damsels,
roads are clogged by thorns.
Weapons,
like photographs of lightning,
became mere showpieces.
3
When the afternoon sun
becomes rooted in the earth
and the trees doze off
stretching their fingers to Periyar[1]
I remember a lost vessel
that once sailed to my shores
as natural as a mango
falling to its own earth.
With a kiss
God united us;
gazing at the night sky
we joined the stars.
Together we saw
the edge of the sky boiling in the waves.
At the doorstep of the sea
a town bloomed
stretching out
fifty-one[2] tongues.
The glory of the sun
has long drowned.
Yet the sound of the same sea
and the fate in the same stars
drip into memory.
We parted ways
in the drought after the flood
pretending nothing passed between us.
Never committed love or time,
shared dreams of the body
nor surrendered language—
Yet had you waited for me this long
on the same deck?
Like a season
nailed onto the wall of earth by some god,
had you stood unmoving
in the summer heat
and salty winds
echoing the same sea?
Many have come later in search of me—
animals, birds, fishes,
a defeated king,
corpses of toys that lost their child,
long kisses of the wind
blown into the darkness,
anchored stars waiting for their turn,
the rain.
Like lightning on the earth
time has shimmered through my bones
unknown by day and night.
Water mountains blooming wild,
shivering soil,
the madness coursing through
the flooded arteries of Periyar—
I still jolt awake
at those memories.
4
Did you confuse
the mouth of the broken pot with bangles?
Did you decipher
the scribblings of the mad foreigner to be a new language?
Dear Mr. Historian,
if you are done seducing the tourists
please be seated
to listen to this song:
As the King for the foreign deity[3]
Decreed to build a temple mighty
With the same sweat and spirit
That we set straight in merit
Ploughing sand, lifting stone and timber in mass
Building walls, fitting solid doors in brass,
The royal caste in a grand manner
Stood adorned under greed’s banner.
The lower caste soon stepped far aside
Cowering at the ‘eternal dharma’ beside
Those spaces vacated by the untouchables
Then claimed by the insatiable feudal men.
Parting the grating sea with rowing oars
Under the warmth that the summer sun pours.
In the raging winds on the wooden vessel
The goddess sways in tune with the waves’ whistle
Wearing the sacred sword and chilamb[4] chiming
The devotees utter the fucking song[5], dancing—
The procession goes on with the mother god blessing
She sinks down, the navel of the land caressing
As an offering once a Portuguese sailor
Sent a bell for the goddess in valour.
Its resounding knell became the music of the world
And on it is written in praise of his Lord,
SEIA OSANTISSIMO NOME DEIESVS LOVVADO[6]—
The bell’s untold story remains in the temple.
Why did you wipe off from the memory
the stories of Persian merchants
who waited on the shore
for goods and spices,
the farmer
who was forced to sell his black tears[7]
for almost nothing,
his skinny barren daughters
who could never climb up high
or flower?
Once a lean sailor came in from the sea.
In his dreams
blazed the vertebra of the sun,
the brain of the sky.
He left no footprints.
Ploughing the soil
he sowed his seeds
and from there grew
tombs like masks on the earth.
Hollow hearts bloomed,
the waterfall between two dreams
dammed itself,
the wings of the wild ducks drooped,
crows became the dead,
the wild smile of a heart
appeared in the midday sky,
the shivering skeleton of the sun.
Several arks came later
hunting wild stars;
Many sailors,
different seeds.
I can hear the footsteps
of those without footprints
thud
thud
spreading down
like lightning from the heart.
Dreams
fears
reflections
excitements
leave no footprints.
When your palm leaves[8]
narrate history as stories of mere conquests,
the sigh of a rotting harbour
reflects a lightning’s smile in the dark.
Buried in the earth
lie several sculptures:
Patirruppattu[9] songs,
various news from
Greece, Arabia, Persia,
a Buddha’s head wrapped in Chinese net,
the chime of death in precious stones,
cotton, food, weapons,
Iziz, Pattini, Kannaki[10]—
the women who still guard
the corpses of their husbands
in the lonely temple tunnels,
the wives who turned to stone
when the fire feasted upon the city;
the steam of their vengeance
rising from the ruins.
A big drop of wrath
covers the sky.
The world ends with water and fire.
Whose world has ended otherwise?
Birth and death—
the alpha and omega.
Yet, a turtle
with ashes in one eye
and water in the other
upholds our dreams.
Its legs hold the weariness of centuries,
the varied waters it has been through,
the fallen faces innumerable
Pallibanaperumal[11],
the crucified brought in
by Hippalus[12] through the waters,
Sankara[13]—the eternal,
Arya Sankara[14],
rural deities who turned to sand and stone,
Naga queens[15],
languages festered with smallpox,
the barge that washed ashore,
a refugee Jew,
the farmer of black tears,
the smile of death
that escaped from the salty lips of drought,
the thud thud sound
of the last beat
that dissolves in the wind
without footprints.
5
Like the song of death
spreading in the burning cabin of a ship,
the presence of sea
unfurls in the memory.
Its voice crawls into me
like the roots of a wild tree
creeping into a dead man’s ear,
like meeting one’s own future in a desert.
I burn in the rhythm of that voice.
In the fall of my life
time and wind tell me of Bilathi[16] ships
landing in Kochazhi[17]
crossing the invisible web of machines.
The sea lashes hard
against my heart,
now covered in moss.
The decayed roots of a giant tree
that had once welcomed thousands of migratory wings
lie spread on the soil.
I can hear
my name slipping into silence
my name like a huge turtle
crawling into oblivion.
In time
the wind has managed
to slowly heal the old wounds;
I leave myself open to new lashes.
The fallen doors
will open only to the sky;
their focus only on
the sun and the moon.
I can hear
the wind brushing past the waves—
ascensions
and descensions.
