Seven Poems
ABOUT THE POEMS The work of a new generation of female poets in Tamil has been one of the most charged spaces in the literature of that language in the last two decades. But these poets are often judged not by the quality of their language and imagery, or the density and detail with which they pursue their themes, but by the prevailing conventions of the world they live in—even the more liberal sections of that world. As the writer and translator Lakshmi Holmström observes, “For these past years, Tamil women poets have been categorized into ‘Bad Girls’ who write ‘body poetry’ and ‘Good Girls’ who refrain from doing so.”
These poems, by four poets who have each at some point been tagged as “bad girls”, are taken from Holmstrom’s new anthology of translations Wild Girls Wicked Words (Sangam House/Kalachuvadu Publications). Intensely proud, sarcastic, assertive and probing, these poems speak in a voice that distances itself from the world’s encrusted vocabulary and categories—a poetic discourse that thinks of itself variously as a “demon language” (Malathi Maithri) or an “infant language” (Sukirtharani). The poems are unapologetically “body poetry”. Indeed, they must necessarily be so, for they show how the female body itself has all too often served as a kind of text that is subjected to certain oppressive and enfeebling readings—readings that the body itself then must try to overthrow by speaking afresh, in a harsher voice, shorn of euphemisms. Holmström’s deft translations bring across to readers in English the unforgettable sound, blazing with oppositional energy, of some of contemporary Indian literature’s brightest flares.
Salma
New Bride, New Night
The evening breeze
blows towards the bride
as she takes her leave
on her wedding day.
Her elder sister
pushes her face inside
the purdah, and instructs her
on making love, surrounded
sweetly, by the scent of flowers.
She has riffled in haste
through pages of heavy books
she herself had not known before,
in order to tell her little sister
which days are best for sex,
when she would, most likely, conceive,
when things are haraam,
she tells her about prescribed
post-coital ablutions.
Before her small eyes
suiting her short frame
images intervene:
the affliction of her own life
and the empty routine
of tired, worn out sex.
These she hides within herself.
From time to time
the younger girl, disturbed
by the shameful, falling words,
tries to muzzle them
with her own foolish
self-confidence.
That entire night
the new bride
disentangles her sister’s advice
caught in her dangling ear-drops,
and lays them out carefully
upon the marriage bed.
Kutti Revathi
Light Is A Prowling Cat
Opening the door noiselessly,
Light puts out a hand
– hesitantly –
wondering if it’s still raining.
Seeing that the rain has gone
it spreads out its shadow-shop
upon the clustering trees,
then climbs up the tent-face
to sit and watch the world.
Scattered upon the earth, the beauty of cat-colours.
When its shadow starts to eat itself
Light slithers down the tree and springs
right up to the lamp in its niche.
Now Light perches on Night’s back
which stands erect as a compound wall
and takes for its own
the great shining light of lovers’ union
through the moon’s wide eyes.
Stone Goddesses
The sculpture, peeling away its skin
of stone, and coming to life,
too shy of the light,
becomes a dark shape
lurking within its curtain of shadows.
Time’s nail
hammered to its feet
has cursed the rain and the wind
also
the flung droppings of bats
and the desolate spaces of solitude.
It is possible that
sculptures overflowing with God’s grace
walk about as goddesses
where man’s gaze is unknown,
in ruined halls, perhaps,
or in the recesses of tall temple towers
But, for some reason,
at the merest hint of man’s scent
they decline into lifeless corpses.
Malathi Maithri
Demon language
The demon’s features are all
Woman
Woman’s features are all
demon
Demon language
is poetry
Poetry’s features are all
saint
become woman
become poet
become demon
Demon language
is liberty
Outside Earth
she stands:
niili, wicked woman.
Observe The Crane
The crane waits
at the verge of the river-bed,
fish swimming in its memory.
In search of its reflection, the moon
wanders, vanishes.
Swirls of roots tear into the earth,
in hunger.
The wind, sweeping up its troubles,
hurls the heat in all directions.
Pulverized, the heart whirls
like dust in a storm.
It isn’t just the earth
that overflows through its cracks
in heat and rage.
The crane
absorbs into itself all that heat
and boils within.
If only the crane would sink into
the whirlpool of its memory
and beat its wings,
the river might gather its form once more
from the scattered drops,
and walk again.
River, watch that crane.
Sukirtharani
Infant Language
I need a language
still afloat in the womb
which no one has spoken so far,
which is not conveyed through signs and gestures.
It will be open and honourable
not hiding in my torn underclothes.
It will contain a thousand words
which won’t stab you in the back
as you pass by.
The late night dreams I memorized –
hoping to share them –
will not be taken for complaints.
Its meanings will be as wide as the skies.
Its gentle words won’t wound
the tender surface of the tongue.
The keys of that unique language
will put an end to sorrow,
make way for a special pride.
You will read there my alphabet, and feel afraid.
You will plead with me in words
that are bitter, sour and putrid
to go back to my shards of darkened glass.
And I shall write about that too, bluntly,
in an infant language, sticky with blood.
I Speak Up Bluntly
I shooed away crows
while flaying dead cows of their skin.
Stood for hours, waiting
to eat the town’s leavings –
then boasted that I ate hot, freshly cooked rice.
When I saw my father in the street
the leather drum strung from his neck,
I turned my face away
and passed him by.
Because I wouldn’t reveal
my father’s job, his income,
the teacher hit me.
Friendless, I sat alone
on the back bench, weeping,
though no one knew.
But now
if anyone asks me
I speak up bluntly:
I am a Paraichi.