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| ANOOP.K.R |
Before we took
flight into the vacations
much before it began .
On the day the flowers bloomed
On the silveroak.
Saying, feeling cold ?
I blanketed her.
The truth is:
Though she was feeling cold
I did not have even a rag with me.
She was the visitor
who came into my cold house.
From Ceylon?
From Australia?
I remember the fable about the new bird
that came into the village
Crested with red feathers.
First spied by the children
on the topmost bough of the banyan tree
of the school court yard.
The same time, when we were
like the space vehicles, eager.
I was one among them
Whenever we slept
In the bird came, flying.
The elders of the toddy shop
stoned it to death.
I will not speak to them!
The same time
the ixora flowers bloomed in the front yard
It was rumored it would never.
I remember everyone saying later
That it flowered ….
When she came.
In the corridors
Her eyes were like the ixora flowers.
Never to return
Like that, some going outs.
May be she wanted to run away
But they wouldn’t permit.
Even if they did
between the congested rocks
in an instant in that single instant
They will not to be seen anymore!
That bird could not fly
But at twice the speed of the fastest bird
It would flit about the boughs of the tree.
My village
Amidst the dung heap.
The sound of trees being sawed
were the only gramophones we heard.
I saw the bird at close quarters
At the brink of the pond
When I was thinking of it the most
Searching for the toy
Lost beneath the hay where it was spread.
On the leafless bough
of the mango tree
that I could reach out and touch.
She was shedding her plumes
There ..standing so close.
From afar my friends were coming
I din’ t call out , dint say anything.
When I looked back
It had jumped from the highest branch
To the next silveroak tree.
It’s feathers
Flowers of the silveroak!
A single red plume glided down
I put it in my trouser’s pocket .
Thinking about it all the time I did
even while I was playing.
Scooping a record of goals
I left
without telling any one.
I ran home
Even shadows could not keep up.
That fast.
Reached home.
Softly very softly
To take out the feather.
Between the
grass and the stones that
strayed into my pocket sometime.
No feather !
A sleep that gets up and leaves half way
Is always there in the left room
Of my house.
What a mighty expanse of empty skies
My pocket has been
You know ?
