TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIYA BY BIBHU PADHI AND MINAKSHI RATH

THE DEATH OF MALLIKA

Mallika, your death took me
to the valley of house lizards.

At that time, inside the house
Of the afternoon pain,
There is an abandoned horse.

On its eyes are pierced by
Two bright brass planks.

At the end of the town,
On the restaurant’s mirror,
My face can’t be seen. My
eyeballs are made of a quiet shield.

Mallika: you are the world’s
Second virgin, on whose small breast
The scar of the snake bite shows?
Perhaps, there was still
a small sin committed sometime.

In the white loneliness,
Therefore, on your unfaithful thighs,
There’s a loud pond of lotuses
In white and pink!

Whose sound of moaning
Is it in my shirt’s breast pocket?
Who cuts out my shirt’s buttons
By a hidden torture?

Mallika: it is good you died.
Your death, tired, went back to the Lord
And the valley of house lizards.

EVERYTHING IS THERE

Nothing that I call mine, is lost—
Neither love, nor sadness,
Nor the flight tickets.

Therefore one has to reach
all those places, where
A few living and the dead
Are seen repeatedly, and
When everyone leaves,
We are quietly surprised.
They move away
To an old theater, on which
Are set handloom stalls.
I no longer follow them.

Some thirty miles away,
At some place or the other,
There’s the great sea—
Mercury during the day,
And green-ink in the evening,
Spilling on to a solitary beach.

When I return to my hotel room,
Late evening, I see a shattered
temple whisper to another.
Inside an old glass tumbler,
The moon stays.

When I begin my day,
Everything is there—
The keys to my room,
The dried-up betel leaves,
My eye-drops.
What all that Mallika
had given me, including
The scar on her breast.
Nothing is lost.

Also, read Two Tamil Poems II by Mounan Yathrika, translated from The Tamil by Sherwin Rodriguez and published in The Antonym:

Two Tamil Poems II— Mounan Yathrika

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