Isai Priya

taken out of a bush and displayed…
Sister! Out of those hands
that had disrobed and destroyed You
our Time extends.

For the miserable Mothers
whose hands beat their own heads
with pain and anguish indescribable,
born of the apprehension of
what might have happened to the corpses
that are yet to be unearthed -
For those sisters who were ended with
deluge of blood-shed
the photograph of your mutilated person
keeps telling tales of all that had taken place at
innumerable nooks and corners.

Destroying, where they had thrown you-
Who had butchered You-
You are reading out yourself
as Headlines…
In the Channel where the Songs and Films
that you’ve acted in
are being aired
Your semi-size image
hangs in a corner as
a sight unbearable.

In the land laid under siege
by the same troops
a woman just like your Mother
is searching for her daughter
feverishly, as the very personification of
Agony.
In the farthest end
of the battle-fronts of those troops
which have reared and nourished
the male organs
and placed blood wide-spread
as Offerings
They had peeled off your uniform
and cast them away.
They had dissolved your
courage and valour.
Your missing revolver
is in the hands of those Troops.

In the same land where
You were earlier rendered victorious
You seemed to have surrendered.
Guns and Penis
with similar gaping mouths
had gobbled the whole of You.

In the courtyard, street, agricultural fields
underneath the landmines, wherever the soil
rolls over
Uniforms and such other attires
Blood, Cyanide bottles , Photographs,
and also some Notes keep on
surfacing.
Oh, where would you have left
the Poem which you had got from me?

(To Isaipriya)

Trans. Latha Ramakrishnan