THE DAY WHEN I SET FOOT IN THE CITY SANS SHADE

A Poem by Deebachelvan in Tamil captioned
NIZHALATRA NAGARATHIL KAAL PADHITHA NAAL

Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan
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In my city where flowers have ceased to be
just today I have set foot
In my city where I used to wander in
gay abandon
after the period of time
loaded with the sorrow of annihilations
I wander a little distance
I search for the things I had
Left behind
some people have returned
Collecting the ashes in their hands
They have returned

That night, for the second time
I had set foot in my city
I was all the while searching for the faces
The soil proved unsuitable for kissing
mixed as it were
with blood and flesh
The walls of my home-town
which have lost their beauty and luster-
I read as a lonely soul.

That the spirits of those sacrificed
hovering everywhere
writhing in anguish, hanging suspended
above the city
_so saying an old lady lies
beneath the wall
The city filled with darkness lay plunged in
nothingness.
The semi-trees and fragmented structures
would sprout again
_ The old lady keeps saying it aloud.

In city torn and ripped apart in curses
Wherever I tread the Earth caves in.
Slowly, inch by inch, I would retrieve my city
from the thorny barbed wire.
From the hands of decay and destruction
I would nourish it and make it prosper
step by step.
In the city of flowers dreams would bloom
My hope that everyone would return
in the coming days
I chanted in the well of night
when I left my City.
And, the City sans shade keeps counting
the footprints of me, the lone visitor.

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