POEMS BY K. SATCHIDANANDAN

K. Satchidanandan is a Malyalam poet. Formerly he was editor of Indian Literature, bimonthly journal of Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, and Chief Executive, Sahitya Akademi. The following translations are done by him from the original Malayalam.

1. A MAN WITH A DOOR

A man walks with a door
along the city street;
he is looking for its house.

He has dreamt
of his woman, children and friends
coming in through the door.
Now he sees a whole world
passing through this door
of his never-built house:
men, vehicles, trees,
beasts, birds, everything.

And the door, its dream
rising above the earth,
longs to be the golden door of heaven;
imagines clouds, rainbows,
demons, fairies and saints
passing through it.

But it is the owner of hell
who awaits the door.
Now it just yearns
to be its tree, full of foliage
swaying in the breeze,
just to provide some shade
to its homeless hauler.

A man walks with a door
along the city street
a star walks with him.

(2006)


2. CHAITANYA AND THE BITCH*


It was at Puri.
A bitch, leprous and dying,
limped towards Chaitanya
and asked him:
"Lord, some hold
only man has soul;
what am I then?"

The sage replied:
"Mother, have you seen
only those who don`t know
how fire burns and snow cools?
There is an unsung melody
in the wind-swept tree,
in the still water,
even in your intense agony.
Each birth is a word
uttered in a language where
the said and the unsaid co-exist.
Ask this breeze fanning your sores
where we spring from.
Listen to the world
quietly, like this rock.
Gold runs about within him;
yet he retains his calm
until the river delves into him.
Those who look for proof
are those who do not know
they are the proof.
What the tree feels as flowering
and the fruit as ripening,
What you feel as movement
and man as freedom
are all the same.

Your pups too open their eyes
into the same light
that cannot be confined
in shrines.
You did not create differences
and then the weapons to undo them.
You did not run after thrones
nor build rotting cities.
You turned your life into a hymn
with this modest tail.
You listened to none
but your dispossessed blood.
You became the statue of equality.
Your will was nature`s;
So was your action.
You recognised the moist earth
and chose her for refuge
like the neem tree in the graveyard
stirred by the dreams of the dead.
The Eternal beyond thoughts and words
is here, in front of you,
like an unread page."

Now Chaitanya caressed
her bruised little frame
with his water-like fingers.
Her body oozed milk.
Only a white flower remained
where she had been.

(1999)

 * Sri Krishna Chaitanya (1486-1532), a Vaishnavite saint, philosopher and poet of Bengal and Orissa.


3. GANDHI AND POETRY

One day a lean poem
reached Gandhi`s ashram
to have a glimpse of the man.
Gandhi spinning away
his thread towards Ram
took no notice of the poem
waiting at his door
ashamed as he was no bhajan.

The poem cleared his throat
and Gandhi looked at him sideways
through those glasses
that had seen Hell.
"Have you ever spun thread?", he asked,
"Ever pulled a scavenger`s cart?
Ever stood the smoke
of an early morning kitchen?
Have you ever starved?"

The poem said: "I was born
in the woods, in a hunter`s mouth.
A fisherman brought me up in his hamlet.
Yet, I know no work, I only sing.
First I sang in the courts:
then I was plump and handsome;
but am on the streets now,
half-starved."

"That`s better", Gandhi said
with a sly smile, "but you must
give up this habit
of speaking in Sanskrit at times.
Go to the fields, listen to
the peasants` speech."

The poem turned into a grain
and lay waiting in the fields
for the tiller to come
and upturn the virgin soil
moist with the new rain.

(1993)

4. GRANNY

My granny was insane.
As her madness ripened into death,
my uncle, a miser,
kept her in our store room
wrapped in straw.

My granny dried up, burst;
her seeds flew out of the window.
The sun came, and the rain,
one seedling grew up into a tree,
whose lusts bore me.

Can I help writing poems
About monkeys with teeth of gold?

(1973)

5. LAL DED SPEAKS AGAINST BORDERS*


Last night I saw a chinar tree
scream and run.
Its leaves and boughs were trembling;
its roots oozed blood.
It was afraid to look back.
The sky had drowned in the Dal lake(1);
it was now a river of fire.

A terrible beast with an allegator`s body
and a thousand dragon-faces
emerged from the sparkling lake.
Its eyes sent forth lightning.
Dead infants dangled from its
ten thousand claws.
Whenever the venom
from its forked tongue fell,
brothers began to fight one another
and the saffron and sandalwood trees
withered in the wink of an eye.
The dust-storm its breath roused
put out the sun and led women astray.
The little boats once filled with lotuses
Now carried the unclaimed dead.
It rained bones.

Siva danced in the lifeless snow
piled up on the ruins.
His drum woke me up.

2

I sit alone, desolate, my throat
blue with the poison I drank.
Where are those deodar trees
that blossomed all over
the moment I asked them about Siva?

Saints of the valley, when did
our words ooze away from hearts
like water from unbaked pitchers?

Springs and stars will not talk
to those who believe in borders.
I don`t believe in borders:
Do the grains of sand know
the name of the land where they lie?
The roots of the apple trees
reach for one another
under the walls built by man.
Wind, water and roots
work against walls.
Birds snap borderlines
with their sharp wings.
The lines on the map
do not stop even a dry leaf.

Let us be rivers.

3

I journeyed from earth 
to heaven and hell;
I sought no word`s permission.
The flesh remained here;
the soul rode the rainbow.
At times it saw an eagle
torn into halves;
clouds growing horns at times.
Saw Pandavas` mother gather
firewood in the forest,
Krishna reaching Kalindi
on the back of a mule,
his clothes soiled.
Saw Siva`s bull plough the field,
Parvati roaming the hills
Shepherding the lands,
Sita singing from a tribal`s hovel;
heard Lava`s laughter
from a tiger`s cave.

4

I see the darkness at noon.
We sit on volcanoes sipping wine,
we dance on the edge of graves.
Perching under the moon
Glistening like Nandi`s eyes (2)
the nightingale told me
blood knows no borders.
It is one`s own blood that
continues to run in another.
When the two touch each other in love
their blood becomes one;
touched with hate
blood flows out screaming.
Even clothes are borders.
So I strip myself to attain my Siva
naked like the breeze over the lake.
My lips are wicks that burn,
my breasts, flowers
and my hips incense:
I am an offering.

Ask the peepal and the palash,
the soul has no religion;
nature suckles everything.

The blue sky is
The throat of the Neelkant. (3)

5

I asked the skylark to reveal to me
the meaning of her song before she died.
She just said, the embers will die
if they cease to gleam.
I saw her song being
baked for the hungry.
It climbed the loom for those
Shivering in the cold
arched itself to form a roof
for the shadeless.
Then I understood
the meaning of prayer.
Each stone became Sambhu. (4)
The cuckoo layed eggs in every vein,
Every nerve became
the string of a santoor. (5)

I danced in the leopard`s carve.
The word lost its boundaries.

6


I am a lake
of measureless blue.
Siva, my shore
of endless green.
No iron curtains, not even hedgerows.
Let rains and deer graze on either side.
Hey, those trying to milk the wooden cow,
arms are meant to hug.
She who has conquered greed
needs no sword; 
She who has conquered lust, no veil.

Follow the stone`s way:
it is both pestle and Natraj, (6)
stain it not.
Look here, my throat is
Brahma`s chalice.
A dove and a lion on my shoulders.
I am the childhood of the future,
The badam tree that has seven lives.

I am the alphabet.

7

I do not believe in borders.
No fortress can stop those
who move from birth to birth.
We were in the past;
We will be in the future.
Infinity is ever fresh,
fresh as well, the moon.

O mind that is ever restless in the body
like a baby on its mother`s lap,
grow from small attachments
to bigger ones,
go to the place
that has no directions.
Consciousness has no borders
outside the senses.
Endless is the sunlight of the jeevanmukta. (7)

Farewell to the vain mornings
where blood-stench blooms
Farewell to the rains of history
that taste of gunpowder.

Come back, vineyards,
come back, my lambs,
sparrows, lotus-ponds:
the Infinite calls
from within the sand grain.

(1996)

*Lal Ded (Lalleswari or Lalla Anfa), the Kashmiri woman saint-poet who left the unhappy Brahmin home of her in-laws to learn philosophy from the siddhas and Sufis, walked naked, rejecting caste, religious rituals and customs and singing her verses, vakhs. Here she comments on borders looking at today`s besieged Kashmir.

1. The big lake in the Kashmir valley. 2. Nandi is Siva`s sacred bull. 3. Siva is called Neelkant, the blue-throated as he drank the poison that emerged with the nectar while the gods and demons together churned the milky ocean. 4. Sambhu, another synonym for Siva. 5. Santoor: a Kashmiri stringed instrument, originally satatantri, having 100 strings. 6. Natraj: The dancing Shiva. 7. The one who is detached and ready for deliverance.

6. SELF

My mother didn`t believe
when, in 1945 I appeared to her
in a dream and told her
I would be born to her the following year.

My father recognized me
As soon as he saw
the mole below my left thumb.
But mother believed to the very end
that someone else had been born to her
masquerading as me.

Father and I pleaded with her;
but dreams are not reliable witnesses.
She went on waiting for that
promised son till she died

Only when she was reborn as my daughter
did she admit it had really been me.

But by then I had begun to doubt
it was someone else`s heart
that was beating within my body.

One day I will retrieve my heart;
my language too.

(July 2010)

7. OLD WOMEN

Old women do not fly on magic wands
or make obscure prophecies
from ominous forests.
They just sit on vacant park benches
in the quiet evenings
calling doves by their names
charming them with grains of maize.

Or, trembling like waves
they stand in endless queues in
government hospitals
or settle like sterile clouds
in post offices awaiting mail
from their sons abroad,
long ago dead.

They whisper like drizzle
as they roam the streets
with a lost gaze as though
something they had thrown up
had never returned to earth.

They shiver like December nights
in their dreamless sleep
on shop verandahs.

There are swings still
in their half-blind eyes,
lilies and Christmases
in their failing memory.
There is one folktale
for each wrinkle on their skin.
Their drooping breasts
yet have milk enough to feed
three generations
who would never care for it.

All dawns pass
leaving them in the dark.
They do not fear death,
they died long ago.

Old women once
were continents.
They had deep woods in them,
lakes, mountains, volcanoes even,
even raging gulfs.
When the earth was in heat
they melted, shrank,
leaving only their maps.
You can fold them
and keep them handy:
who knows, they might help you find
your way home.

(2007)

8. STAMMER

Stammer is no handisap.
It is a mode of speech.

Stammer is the silence that falls
between the word and its meaning,
just as lameness is the
silence taht falls between
the word and the deed.

Did stammer precede language
or succeed it?
Is it only a dialect or
a language itself?
These questions make
the linguists stammer.

Each time we stammer
we are offering a sacrifice
to the God of meanings.

When a whole people stammer
stammer becomes their mother-tongue:
just as it is with us now.

God too must have stammered
when He created man.
That is why each of man`s words
carries several meanings.
That is why everything he utters,
from his prayers to his commands,
stammers
like poetry. 

(2002)

9. THAT`S ALL

Like the dog marking
its passage with piss
I mark my passage
with words that smell life:
that`s all.

Like the tusker leading its calves,
their trunks hooked to its tail,
to the forest stream, I lead my lines
safe to a moist place:
that`s all.

Like the bloodstains of the prey
lead to the leopard`s open mouth,
my metaphors lead you
to the sharp teeth of existence:
that`s all.

Like the lion marking
its territory in the woods
with its roar, I mark
my territory in language:
that`s all.

Like the mother-cat
carrying in its mouth
its kitten to other homes,
I carry my poems into other tongues:
that is all.

I am no Yayati.
I gather my mustard from
houses where people die.

10. THE MAD

The mad have no caste
nor religion. They transcend
gender, live outside
ideologies. We do not deserve
their innocence.

Their language is not of dreams
but of another reality. Their love
is moonlight. It overflows
on the full moon day.

Looking up they see
gods we have never heard of. They are
shaking their wings when
we fancy they are
shrugging their shoulders. They hold
even flies have souls
and the green god of grasshoppers
leaps up on thin legs.

At times they see trees bleed, hear
lions roaring from the streets. At times
they watch Heaven gleaming
in a kitten`s eyes, just as
we do. But they alone can hear
ants sing in a chorus.

While putting the air
they are taming a cyclone
Over the Mediteranean. With
their heavy tread, they stop
a volcano from erupting.

They have another measure
of time. Our century is
their second. Twenty seconds,
and they reach Christ; six more,
they are with the Buddha.

In a single day, they reach
the big bang at the beginning.

They go on walking restless for,
their earth is boiling still.

The mad are not
mad like us.

(1996)



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