Translation of M M Sacheendran’s Poem,
ലിപിയില്ലാത്ത ഭാഷകൾ
From your memory,
I am fading off slowly
Like the message of a tribal tongue
That the vanishing forest tracks of a ruined race
Call to mind, only to forget.
The scriptless love, that
Oozes up as the essence from inside a tough crust,
Just frailties dead, like the un-shut eye
Of a peacock feather kept among the pages of a ruffled school book.
The words, the streams that flowed spoken and heard
The words that sprout
From the inner feelings unyielding to any grammars,
Un-polluting any burning solid rock…….
The springs once we exchanged, interlaced with our love…..
But the lisping of the past
May not dissolve into your qualities
Nor ride through your seas….
Within the ideal language
That lingers above the mundane
Day to day life as a watchful mole,
Without casting a sheen
In your dreams
As you contain your inner love
Within the boundaries of mores
Making no errors of syntax
Or an unruly linking of terms
Remember not to remember
Those spilt declarations of yore…..
Lips that seal each other
Scripting notes in frantic kisses
For fear of being ripped apart
By the mindless laws of jungle justice,
The courting places we recognize
By the odor of sweat
Even with our eyes closed,
The depth of the words that
Dance on slippery paths,
Clearing once and then muddying
Twining into each other,
Turning in like a tune,
Those love-laden lisps and hums
That melt and rain in to our ears,
Can we ever confine them to mere alphabets?
(Translated for National symposium of Poets, All India Radio)