SORROW-FILLED SOIL

- Deebachelvan ----------------------------------------

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY LATHA RAMAKRISHNAN

01
Danisha, please don’t look at me and wave your hand!
Your face, the very personification of sorrow,
languishing for the Lost Land,
overflows as the defeat of people betrayed.
I can’t go past a great distance.
As they didn’t stop me on the way, just as usual,
I could see you.
Your voice which keeps sounding again and again
in this land of sorrow, Oh_
I just can’t listen to it.

The day of solution arrives.
Breaking open the thorny fence
You are going to enter into your own piece of land.
Come! let’s catch hold of those who greedily grab
and take away our land;
let’s shake their hands and retrieve ours.

Snakes and centipedes
surround your tent.
Danisha, will you teach me also to smile?

That I am a terrorist_
do you know Danisha?
They have passed the verdict that
because of this ‘terrorist’ the people’s safety is at stake.
But still, I will move along these streets.
For I long to see children like you
who remain suffering in this sorrow-filled soil.

Asking the people to get displaced again-
when the announcement came
Danisha said ‘no’ with tears in her eyes.
This Land has been taken by the king.
And the king who keeps munching the forests and soils
keeps flying straight above, hovering over this Land.
Without Land what are the children going to do?
The birds are yet to return.
This land with no guard lies in whose hand?
_children like Danish begin to enquire.


02
Once upon a time this Land belonged to us
and the children were very happy.
The militants kept vigil over it.

The Buddha who was the commander of the modern troops,
waged war.
And, climbing on the papal tree
when he was laying siege on this land
the king’s shadow was falling on people’s soil.
The king ate the temples,
The king drank the pond,
The king grazed the forests,
With legs of ashes
he visits our cities carrying a sword.

My face, branded as the face of the deadly killer
was photographed by them umpteen number of times,
from numerous angles.
All the words invariably give the same verdict as gift.
I am destroying my own self.

When this so-called terrorist arrived at the city in the night
his ears were so full of your voice
forcing your way through the landmines when you go
towards your piece of land
I too go along with you.
Danisha, for you and me they don’t even give a tent.
Neither you nor I have no idea
what a lovely house looks like.
With tents, bushes and weeds and the soil
we keep going
In this gloom-filled soil _
why the sorrow being so persistent?
______________________
Image: child Danisha of Poonagar.