THE IDENTIFICATION NUMBER

In a solitary island they have confined you.
The Identification Number stamped on the back
remains stuck on the thorny fence.
The watch-towers atop the trees
are going past myself.
In the spaces where the wind keeps wandering
endless vacuum keeps swelling.
In the house built of thorny-wires
the cock writhes and moans.
With the sky melting and filling up the rice-pot
You stir up the Hope of
living for the sake of children.
Of those streets and lanes that you know not
I won’t be saying anything.
Time is going past us all too hurriedly.

The thorny-fence is worn round
the child’s person, as attire..
While I was coming through the green fields
the usual shrieks of unbearable torture could be heard.
Many a penis and vagina keep floating
in the Sea-Lake
The watch-towers have thronged the old bridge,
devovouring it.

Caught between Night and Day
You are crushed and torn apart.
The Identity-Card is hanging in my neck.
In the relief-food that has come after a long time
You calculate the Modern Economy.
In the house with no walls wherein dust enters
The colonial cities
are coming and installing themselves.
Words are there still.
You leave without saying something.
Your words are piled up in the emptied cartridges
of the shells that have dumped us here in a heap
are neatly kept in rows.
The poem that you are unable to write -
Please read it to me.
Words keep pouring down behind.

When the time allotted for me gets over
the noise of the cock comes to be.
Now I recollect once again
The Identification Number of Yours.
_____________
(May 2009 )

A Poem in Tamil by Deebachelvan titled
MUTKAMBIGALIL PADIGIRA ADAIYAALA ILAKKAM
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan