Three poems by Syam Sudhakar
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.
Tonle Sap: A Song of Sorrow
(To Ramesh)
Above the boat, the sky.
Far below
like a bolt of molten lightning the lake[18].
Like a tired bird
that returns to its branches the lake
rebounds its course.
The fishermen in a moment
reverse their oars. Fins lose their balance in a splash.
The ferry woman says a few years back
along with a hundred lamps, thousands of people
and millions of dreams sank in these waters.
Her own children
the house of her dreams and a pregnant goat
had drowned in the memories.
As we approach the shore she flirts with tuktuk drivers, bargains over ripe carrots and kicks the lake
into laughter.
One night
when madness rebounds through my arteries
I go in search of her where they sell moonlight.
Another night
I see her
melting into my dreams— a lake within a lake, invisible in the wind,
a path within a path.
Then one morning
she blooms near the lake
and grows roots in the waters (as if waiting for
the return of the dreams exiled to the depths).
Her leaves
elegant under the sun.
Habitat
A friend gifted
an indoor plant
when a PhD was
awarded in our family.
Pretending to be a tree
the plant
stood tall on our dining table
spreading its roots
into our appetite.
After dinner
my grandmother,
abandoned by
her seven children,
got an idea of
making a nest
on the tree.
We all laughed.
She withdrew
from her plan.
But from then on
every evening
the plant lay
a white dream;
grandmother
brooded on them,
silent.
[1] A river in Kerala that was once a major trade route. [2] Malayalam, the official language of Kerala, has fifty-one alphabets. [3] Tabula Peutingeriana says about a shrine of Augustus near the ancient harbour of Muziris. [4] A sacred hollow anklet. [5] Obscene, devotional songs sung at the Kodungalloor Bharani Festival to appease the goddesses. [6] ‘In the name of the most holy God Jesus’. It is believed that the bell was given to Kodungalloor temple by Udayamperoor church at a time when religious beliefs were more harmonious. [7] Black pepper, one of the major commodities in the spice trade of Kerala. [8] Ancient inscriptions on palm leaves. [9] Classical work in Tamil which has reference about trade in Muziris. [10] Widowed goddesses from Egypt, Sri Lanka and India respectively who have similar stories. [11] A Hindu king of Chera region (now Kerala) who later embraced both Buddhism and Islam. [12] The south-west Monsoon wind used by sailors to cross the Indian ocean. [13] Lord Siva. [14] Adi Shankara, who was once cast out by the Brahmin community, later became the icon of the same commune. [15] Snake worship. [16] An early local slang for England. [17] The old name of Cochin harbour. [18] Tonle Sap, a river in Cambodia, infamous for its flood that seasonally reverses its flow.
Winner of the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize, 2022, Syam Sudhakar is a bilingual poet from Kerala, writing both in Malayalam and English. His poems have been translated into several Indian and foreign languages. His poetry functions chiefly on the rich sound patterns of the Malayalam language. He is one of the pioneers to use the technique of magic realism in Indian poetry, a technique that is usually restricted to prose. Syam is based in Kerala and teaches English literature at St. Thomas College, Thrissur.