Letters were black

Letters were black

So are the words

They became a platoon
And started the war
Burned entire pages
Anthology
Language
Town, country

I have gone underground
Fearing poems may
Betray me and kill

Letters were mean
So are the words
So are the poems

The Road to Noyal

1



Road, a blazing black strip

And a wayside sign

- Noyal, 20 KM

Sleeping in midday heat



A lust burned inside me

Seeing the raw magnificence


I urinated in the dry soil

Amorously touching her with my

Warm arch of urine

Slowly something spread in me

And somehow felt, I am pregnant


The village

Grown in me, minute by minute

Second by second

Along with her history and hope

Small huts, bright colors

Graceful Tamil slang,

Sugar cane fields, dry lands, buffalo, rats

Grasshoppers, crows, bullock carts

Tube wells, tamarind trees, bicycles

Folklores, culture, music

- An entire village within me


2



Yesterday night, burning

With feverish hallucinations

Yelling and vomiting

Everything I carried inside for centuries

Came out, making my room the village


Small huts, bright colors

Sugar cane fields, dry lands,

Buffalo, rats

Grasshoppers, crows, bullock carts

Tube wells, tamarind trees, bicycles

Filled my room


The road to Noyal coiled and coiled

In my room like placenta

I shut tight my eyes and lay curled

Warm, as in a womb


A horn shook my room

And a wayside sign glowed

In the beam of a passing truck

– Noyal, 0 KM

*



Noyal – A Tamil Village