Poetry - STAMMER by K. Satchidanandan

Poetry - STAMMER by K. Satchidanandan

Stammer is no handicap:
it is a mode of speech.

Stammer is the silence that falls
between the word and its meaning,
just as lameness is the silence
that falls between the word and the deed.

Did stammer precede language
or succeed it?
Is it only a dialect
or a language itself?-these questions
make the linguists stammer.

Each time we stammer,
we are offering a sacrifice
to the God of Meanings.

When a whole people stammer
stammer becomes their mothertongue
as it is with us now.

God too must have stammered
when He created Man.
That is why each word of man
carries different meanings.
That is why everything he utters
from his prayers to his commands
stammers,
like poetry.

(VIKKU,Translated by the poet)

Paintings by Joshua Godfrey - A Girl with Parrot - July 2010

Paintings by Joshua Godfrey - A Girl with Parrot - July 2010

Poetry - S E L F ( Swam) / K. Satchidanandan

S E L F ( Swam) / K. Satchidanandan

My mother didn’t believe
when, in 1945 I appeared to her
in a dream and told her
I would be born to her the following year.

My father recognized me
As soon as he saw
the mole below my left thumb.
But mother believed to the very end
that someone else had been born to her
masquerading as me.

Father and I pleaded with her;
but dreams are not reliable witnesses.
She went on waiting for that
promised son till she died

Only when she was reborn as my daughter
did she admit it had really been me.

But by then I had begun to doubt
it was someone else’s heart
that was beating within my body.

One day I will retrieve my heart;
my language too.

July, 2010

( Translated from Malayalam by the poet )