Who Said

Who said that waiting is a railway station in North Malabar? That a morning in uniform will arrive there in a coffin? Who said memory is a fragrant window opening on ripe corn fields? That our bodies grow cold as the sun grows dim there? Who said trees have ceased to follow wind's language? That we must conceal from lilies and rabbits the news of the death of love? Who said now moons will be heavy like a drunkard's head? That evenings will have sick hearts like a desperate lover's whispered songs? Who said we are running barefoot over red-hot iron with a fistful of childhood rain? That we will, at the end, hand over our keys to the same rain? Who said men, once dead, grow younger entering another Time? That all the birds that vanished at the sunrise will return when the world ends? Who said we would understand everything without anyone telling us anything? That still we would not share anything with anyone? POSTED BY SATCHIDANANDAN AT 7:27 AM 2 COMMENTS: THREE POEMS OF HOPE K.Satchidanandan On Wet Grass That footprint on the wet grass needs not be death's; may be a folksong has gone by. The butterfly quivering on your palm has something to tell you. How the falling mangoes and jasmines look for your cupped hands To stop them midway! Don't you hear the sea whisper not to pay back your debts? Even your dark little room has a piece of sky. Everything is blessed: fish, crickets, sedges, sunlight, lips, words. At Times At times it is good to laugh: even before you take your life, for, the sun survives you, fishermen set their tiny boats once more on the raging sea, the drowned man's clothes learn to fly about the riverbank, a man and a woman blossom into heaven from a bed of misery, a boy riding the noon dreams of caparisoned elephants, a girl turns into a breeze inhaling the scent of orange blossoms, a home-bound bird deposits four blue eggs and a star in the twilight, Sehgal trembles like the moon in a river 1 on the lips of a happy drunk, a poem slips past a banyan tree hiding its face behind an umbrella, a raindropp turning into emerald on a colocasia leaf remembers the poet Kunhiraman Nair. 2 (Translated from Malayalam by the poet ) Notes: 1. A legendary Hindustani singer. 2. A Malayalam poet with an intense nostalgia for Kerala's vanishing landscapes.