Two poems by Salma #Translation


The Final Moment

In a silent house
I come upon
your affection wafting
from the scented
powder tin
you forgot
and left behind.

The house begins to come apart
in the frolic of children.
From behind a curtain
this life becomes
happily normal again.

Without a fight,
the sparkling china that was
up and about just yesterday, along
with my incessant chatter,
begins to fold and freeze
inside the wooden cupboard

Talk that this could be
the season’s final moment
trickles out in the sob that rises
from inside the cupboard’s door.

Translated by N Kalyan Raman from the Tamil poem, Iruthik kanam by Salma 


The path of tenderness

Craving all my tenderness,
the lone Portia tree
is waiting to grab it.
Thrusting its wistful
face that strains and brims
through the window bars,
in despair that I might
go elsewhere to seek
the fruit and flowers
it no longer holds,

it displays
the coolness piled high
by its green foliage
and the blanket of darkness
woven by its shade
(though strewn with fine holes).
The garden lizard roams
all over the tree’s body, while
rolling its pearly eyes on me.
The wasps and the lizard
fall asleep on the tree.

Holding twigs in their
beaks, some birds
hover above, looking
for a home.

In spite of so much,
despondent at having failed
to define the direction
of my tenderness, it broods
and broods, singeing
its own greenery.

Translated by N Kalyan Raman from the Tamil poem, Kanivin Thisai by Salma

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