The Shared Mirror

Waking up,
Sitting up with a yawn,
Rolling up the tattered mat,
Tucking up the torn mundu,
Walking along the hedges.
Not for a lark.
The muddy fields grimace,
The cows wag their tails.

Where is that long night –
The one they sang their fervent hymns about,
The one they said spring thunder
Would light up with brilliant flashes
Before the great new dawn arrived?

Hate, anger –
Glinting knives
Still whetted
On racing pulses.

They stood leaning against the good old walls,
The graying firebrands.
Out of the dry, cracked, poetry-less soil they had sprung.
Drained by the waters of compassion
They had grown dreams on their bodies.

They now watch
As texts are served on a platter. 

By Raghavan Atholi, translated by K.M Sheriff  who writes "He has forged a unique idiom and unique imagery, distilled from Dalit culture and experience. The fierce expressions and torrid images in Raghavan’s poetry appear destined to be lasting influences in Malayalam poetry. He has certainly been an influence on the rise of his younger contemporaries like S. Joseph and Renu Kumar in Malayalam poetry.”

The novel Chorapparisham by Raghavan Atholi  won the prestigious Vaikkam Muhammed Basheer Memorial Award in 2006.

Before the garbage heap in the street
A hungry woman waits.
Turning her back 
On the parting day’s sullen face,
Clutching at her sinking wages,
A bundle of fodder
Wrenched out of the earth
Balanced on her head,
She waits.
Late into the night
In her pitch black hut
Guarding a cold meal
She waits.

The stones her hands broke up,
The furrows of tears
She cast her seeds into,
The team that groaned
As hand-to-mouth carts lurched,
Generations that staggered and fell,
Sons who never came back,
Clans that vanished in the wild,
Treacherous pathways that turned into quicksand,
Full barns,
Empty hovels,
A goddess shrunken into an old crone.

On the hedge
The child was nursed with tears.
Hopes went to rot in the ditches like coconut husk
And returned beaten and baked by the sun.
Rushing feet crushed the handful of rice
Spilt from the beggar’s cupped hands.
The parched throat cracked up
Before the battle for water was won.

This battered woman,
My flesh and blood,
My mother.
Today
She waits for the light that went out to return,
For a handful of rice untainted with blood,
For a piece of land untainted with greed. 

By Raghavan Atholi, sculptor and poet. Translated by K M Sheriff.