POEM BY M K HARIKUMAR

The black hole

The dried almond leaves in the notebook

The tabernacle of dew drops on grass tips
The weak and withering leaves
The fallen flowers
The corridors where we had our lunch
The end of recitals
Tunes already hummed
The discussions about books

I searched for my childhood in
flowers lying on the sidewalks
Never will I get back those youthful days
when daggers stood aloft in
the island of cosmic blues
nor could I trace back the blood red
days of my college life

I attempted to touch the nights
in the barren solitude of broken love
but they eluded me for ever

The yesterdays of passionate love
The chronicles of love drops
The promises secured after long wait
and by telling so many tales
The bond established through kisses
and sexual bliss

All have vanished somewhere;
With my hands I groped all around
Arjun went to the mountains in search of
the warmth of a bygone romance;
I contemplated Shiva in my meditation,
wept calling my mother
took repeated dips in thoughts,

Plucking of jungle fruits,
The moments in forests,
The homosexual passions
Other sexual ecstasies,
And the nights beneath mango trees.



Playhouses, bridges and tents built
in between quarrels and affection;
The momentous blossoms of
pranks, hide and seek games

Her cascading romantic strands of hair
observed only during the twilight
prayers in temples

Then the ambiguous parting ,
As words failed, dead romances
dropped from lips into black holes.

The sharp edges of silence,
The pinpoints of compassion,
All have gone for ever
Looking back there is only
void

Nothing is there in the mind
and in my immobile and ghostly physique;
All the carcasses have vanished
into the abyss of time and thoughts

trans:saj mathews

POEM BY M K HARIKUMAR

The black hole

The dried almond leaves in the notebook

The tabernacle of dew drops on grass tips
The weak and withering leaves
The fallen flowers
The corridors where we had our lunch
The end of recitals
Tunes already hummed
The discussions about books

I searched for my childhood in
flowers lying on the sidewalks
Never will I get back those youthful days
when daggers stood aloft in
the island of cosmic blues
nor could I trace back the blood red
days of my college life

I attempted to touch the nights
in the barren solitude of broken love
but they eluded me for ever

The yesterdays of passionate love
The chronicles of love drops
The promises secured after long wait
and by telling so many tales
The bond established through kisses
and sexual bliss

All have vanished somewhere;
With my hands I groped all around
Arjun went to the mountains in search of
the warmth of a bygone romance;
I contemplated Shiva in my meditation,
wept calling my mother
took repeated dips in thoughts,

Plucking of jungle fruits,
The moments in forests,
The homosexual passions
Other sexual ecstasies,
And the nights beneath mango trees.



Playhouses, bridges and tents built
in between quarrels and affection;
The momentous blossoms of
pranks, hide and seek games

Her cascading romantic strands of hair
observed only during the twilight
prayers in temples

Then the ambiguous parting ,
As words failed, dead romances
dropped from lips into black holes.

The sharp edges of silence,
The pinpoints of compassion,
All have gone for ever
Looking back there is only
void

Nothing is there in the mind
and in my immobile and ghostly physique;
All the carcasses have vanished
into the abyss of time and thoughts

trans:saj mathews

Poem by M K Harikumar

Rain, wind and moonshine

Rain brought wind;
wiind brought moonshine
and moonshine brought wind
The fourth day of Nalacharitham.

In the backdrop of
the speech-less
deep dissatisfactions
of love,
the strands of rain
faltered to tell
some mystic secret

Drenched and dripping
the rain in its boiling passion
yearned to hold the wind
in its tight embrace.

Drinking the blood of moonshine
like an amorphous amoeba
the wind assumed
colossal proportions

The knights of moonshine
wearing the insignia of the
rain were getting wounded
in battles of jungle wind.

Rain lined up a thousand
guards to receive the sky
on its return from pilgrimage.

Disheartened by its vain search
of gods of wind
the moonshine finally fell
in love with rain.

Unaware about the gender
the rain opened up its heart:
“oh how long since we
had our journey together!
but we never recognized
each other”.

In the bygone past
I had had lives of a priest,
a parrot, a knight and
a banyan tree.
And what about you?

Gathering the pieces of
the different lives
I started painting
images of
surrealistic
existence;

There was my mother, my sisters
They all come alive
As I muse about the
gates where
I had fallen in love, romanced
and cried,

The dead souls
came back to life
as sunrays;

The wind turned into
a thousand souls
whispering to the leaves
the tales of my previous births.

They are taking nostalgic
shelter in twigs;
to escape from whom?
The daytime hunters, robbers,
or couriers of love?

When memories die down
the buzzing sound was not that
of cicadas;

The butterflies
were fleeing
at the sound of approaching
rain from afar.



I painted a few nudes
of wind;
A leaf from the memoirs
of moonshine
landed on the sprawling
shores of rain;

The symbolic images
of wind preferred to
keep aloof without
uttering a word;

Even that was poetic

The rain, moonshine
and the wind merged together
forming a single carpet;
the rain was blue,
wind was white
and the moonshine
was green.

When night came
rain emptied blue
and withdrew into
the skies as an oil
paint;

Wind was trying
to imitate the silence
of a primordial reptile
while the moonshine set out
on its covert
night pilgrimage.

trans:saj mathews

Poem by M K Harikumar

Rain, wind and moonshine

Rain brought wind;
wiind brought moonshine
and moonshine brought wind
The fourth day of Nalacharitham.

In the backdrop of
the speech-less
deep dissatisfactions
of love,
the strands of rain
faltered to tell
some mystic secret

Drenched and dripping
the rain in its boiling passion
yearned to hold the wind
in its tight embrace.

Drinking the blood of moonshine
like an amorphous amoeba
the wind assumed
colossal proportions

The knights of moonshine
wearing the insignia of the
rain were getting wounded
in battles of jungle wind.

Rain lined up a thousand
guards to receive the sky
on its return from pilgrimage.

Disheartened by its vain search
of gods of wind
the moonshine finally fell
in love with rain.

Unaware about the gender
the rain opened up its heart:
“oh how long since we
had our journey together!
but we never recognized
each other”.

In the bygone past
I had had lives of a priest,
a parrot, a knight and
a banyan tree.
And what about you?

Gathering the pieces of
the different lives
I started painting
images of
surrealistic
existence;

There was my mother, my sisters
They all come alive
As I muse about the
gates where
I had fallen in love, romanced
and cried,

The dead souls
came back to life
as sunrays;

The wind turned into
a thousand souls
whispering to the leaves
the tales of my previous births.

They are taking nostalgic
shelter in twigs;
to escape from whom?
The daytime hunters, robbers,
or couriers of love?

When memories die down
the buzzing sound was not that
of cicadas;

The butterflies
were fleeing
at the sound of approaching
rain from afar.



I painted a few nudes
of wind;
A leaf from the memoirs
of moonshine
landed on the sprawling
shores of rain;

The symbolic images
of wind preferred to
keep aloof without
uttering a word;

Even that was poetic

The rain, moonshine
and the wind merged together
forming a single carpet;
the rain was blue,
wind was white
and the moonshine
was green.

When night came
rain emptied blue
and withdrew into
the skies as an oil
paint;

Wind was trying
to imitate the silence
of a primordial reptile
while the moonshine set out
on its covert
night pilgrimage.

trans:saj mathews

മുഖവും മനസുമായി

മുഖം മനസിനെ അറിയുന്നേയില്ല.
ഒരു അവസരത്തിലും മുഖവും മനസുമായി
ഒരു മുഖാമുഖത്തിന്‌ സാധ്യതയില്ല.
മുഖത്തിന്‌ അതിണ്റ്റെ വഴി;
മനസിന്‌ അതിണ്റ്റെയും