THE LAND OF *‘erukkalai’ flower

A POEM BY DEEBACHELVAN

Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

Are you listening to those voices that keep wandering
all over the ‘erukkalai land?
“Oh Mother, “Ever our Dear Mother Land!
_ So I can hear those words unleashed
rising up from the debris of tombs
that are smashed and broken

From the seed-pit filled up to the neck
with tears of a mammoth mass of humans,
blood oozes out.
Do you realize that you have killed but the Immortals?
Pieces of bones have popped up and
broken apart.
Hand over those smashed fragments of bones
and that of tombs.
So the Mothers wail, beating their chests.

Oh, I can hear it all

The ‘erukkalai’ saplings sprout aplenty

Our hands have no saplings
The coconut trees are not in a position
to give us saplings
Upon the land where the tender ones lie dead,
burnt beyond recognition,
gigantic trees stand with wounds all over.

The Mothers who were hoping against hope
that the tombs would bloom
refuse to believe that you have butchered the tombs too.
The Land that used to shine red figuratively,
with lights and lamps
Today, turn red literally with the blood
flowing out of tombs sliced and smashed

Wearing the erukkalai blossoms my beloved
surfaces out of those pits and approaches me.
In the roots of the erukkalai tree
my brother has spread his contenance.
The children have nothing
except erukkalai leaves to read and play.
“They are there, underneath the ground”_
so blabber the words of mother turned child.

This Great Land is turning into a land
of the erukkalai flower
Did you hear what those wandering underneath
speak?
Did you see their dreams and visions?
The more they are cut – the more bloom
the karthigai flowers

The lives wide-awake, unable to lie cease raging and sleep
keep wandering for ever.
In the butchered tombs the ever alive dream overflows
In the smashed bits and fragments
why have the erukkalai come to sprout?
They grow dense, intense
as our Dream
___________________

Image: The Memorial of the Dead in Kilinochi has been destroyed

*erukkalai : a shrub that grows aplenty in Cemetry/burial grounds