Before the sound of the horses’ hooves
and the dust they raised
quite died away,
full of grief at your lover’s departing
as she left for another land, another man,
Sappho,
you might have downed
a jar of wine, and lost yourself
listening to the distant
faceless flute song
in an olive grove on a mountain slope.
White herons do wrong
to swallow pregnant fish.
We, who eat fried uluvai fish
and drink toddy
under the shade of a punnai tree
will chase away the herons
by the sluice where the silver carp leap,
Velliviidhi*,
I shall lie upon your lap
as we listen to the distant yaazh
and its faceless music.
White herons do wrong
to swallow pregnant fish.
Amidst tall buildings, their colours faded,
along the chill, misty streets,
unbearable to see your tender lips
turn into blue flowers.
Your gloveless hands thrust into
your pockets, having lost all
the compass points,
you look for wine shops
and return with sleeping pills
Sylvia –
I wait with my kisses,
listening to the faceless music
threading from the distant violin.
Let us come away
from a land where sacrificial altars throng,
from a time driven by death,
and raise with our words
a castle surrounded by a moat.
From the midst of a solitude
more dense and mysterious than a forest
we will read our poems
full of dreams and desires,
Sovereign Queens of Words;
we will weave with our bodies
a blanket against the cold,
listening to the faceless music
of distant drums.
* Velliviidhi was a woman poet of Sangam times. One of her poems, from Nattrinai (c. 2nd century AD) refers to the heron which flies into the heroine’s village to feed on the fish in the pond there.