Anjolie Ela Menon. Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi
Vidhya Sreenivasan
My Tabletop Body
I invite my lord to dine.
Here is my heart, open to your will,
Served atop my dining-table body,
Steaming with my fragrant breath.
The legs are sturdy. They have
Held up your temple these many years;
Accept them.
My hair-strands will fan you,
Pluck my nerves for music.
My mouth is your spittoon.
Remember, dear lord, to gore in deep
for the sweetest portions. You will find them wrapped,
steamed in tissue-leaves.
You may leave the bones behind,
Having sucked out the life.
What Her Human Said
She is young,
Barely grown into adulthood.
Everywhere her eyes fall
They open in wonder,
My little girl
Who still digs her paws in the air.
What will she do
When she sees a tom
Of brusque purrs
And stealthy muscle
Owning the mountains
Where the hornbill cries hoarse
At the wake of dusk
What She Said, Sighing and Stretching
My human is naive,
As young in mind
As she is all-assuming.
Eyes that wonder
Are young and old
And beyond both, a state of freshness
I only know too well.
Brusque-purring toms
Inhabit every other street,
Mountain, seashore,
Call it what you may.
The love for this sky
Unpredictably blue
With its dots of birds
And its cacophony of Crow
Human Biscuit Snuggles
Fellow cat Poetry reading
Stretches beyond dusk-wake and moon-rise
Into fresh mornings
Where the world dresses up
To perform another play.
Elaborate Sighing
Conversations with you
Are the quietest I have known.
Barely under a whisper,
Sunbird-wing flutter
Heartthrob long.
Afterwards
The soul pines blue-black
And succumbs to writing.
The Insistent Flower
A dark flower bloomed
Right here,
Unfurling
In deliberate beauty.
It assumed
All the seasons for itself.
Each of the bees,
Maddened, intoxicated,
Swooned over.
It unfurled
At night,
And the moon melted
Right in.
In the morning
It cast aside the dew
And directed one fatal glance my way.
Onlooker, At the Temple
This time,
We’ve both moved away
from the unseen corner;
Away from whispered monologues
for select ears.
This time
When the vaadyam crashes the ear into dance
And you
Perform yours
It won’t be so private anymore.
This time
When you raise your leg
And mirror your palms
My ecstasy shall not contain
In shame or modesty.
This time
When you spread your hair
To the universe,
My bliss
shall become Bliss.
This time
When you ravish the heart
Nobody will know whose.
This time
When you relish the offering
Tears of love will spring
From a thousand eyes,
From the trees, from the birds,
From the gushing river.
This time, when you assume
The throne
Everybody will gasp
A single verse of awe.
This time, when you are invoked,
There will be no you or me.
*******
Vidhya Sreenivasan translates short stories and poetry from Tamil. A poet herself, she loves “being in open, natural spaces. Forests make me extremely happy, as do mountains, and practically any place that lets us reminisce that we're not different from nature.”She teaches English literature at Stella Maris College in Chennai, India.
Translations by Vidhya Sreenivasan in The Beacon
Short Fiction-II: PEOPLE
Short Fiction-1: CAT AT THE AGRAHAARAM
Crossing Interwoven Boundaries on Wings of Words
Absolutely beautiful.