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

THE DREAM OF ARULLAMMAA WHO HAS WADED THROUGH THE SORROW-STRUCK SPAN OF TIME

In the face-to-face session with this old lady
who has lost all her precious times
in incessant and irreparable destruction
Words have turned frozen.
The dream of life that lies dormant in her voices
and her hunger that remains
non-satiated
She keeps telling again and again

AruLlammaa who had escaped from dreadful moments and returned
has her eyes filled with God.
In the Land of immensely deep perils
they have brought her times in a chair.
Arullammaa’s ever elongating prayers
grow bigger than the size of God.
The dream for Life remains frozen in the words of Life
that has come to its close with nothing but disappointments.

The tales she has in store
laden with the cruel experiences of War
And her body that has refused to
explode and scatter into bits
Her long, full-fledged life that has
refused to be silenced
keep nurturing never-ending dreams.
The old lady who has defied the War
keeps sharing with the kids
the Great Tale of Colossal Destruction
Arullammaa is speaking to the children about nothing else
but the unrealized dreams
______________

A poem in Tamil by Deebachelvan titled
THUYAR MIGUNDHA KAALATHI KADANDHA ARULLAMMAAVIN KANAVU
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

(Thanks: Pongu Thamizh)

THE GREAT LAND : WEARING ALL WOUNDS IT STANDS THERE SMILING

(A lot more news yet to be accessed lie there, buried deep in that Great Land)

Deaths that none have yet realized in full
Keep seeping on the seashore of Nandhi-Kadarkarai.
The cassettes that entwine all kinds of tortures in a long chain
The troops watch in their exclusive night Channels
as a great pastime.
In the great land captured by the accused and criminals
all that are desired are being carried out.


In the ground where men, holding tight their dreams
were so buried
they have planted the soldier who holds the gun
that reminds everything-
the soldier filled with venom and violence
keeps showing his gory face on all sides
of the Great Land

He keeps elaborating on his glorious tales
of defeating and annihilating the people of the land.
Splashing his victory song up above the sky
He drenches the whole land with it.
In the region where entry is prohibited to children
With Death oozing out and pervading
The demonic women having skeletons tied in their legs
keep performing their terrorizing dances.


Wherever the Emperor of the Song of Valour and Victory treads
Death and Blood are being felt.
With the voices murmuring and turning silent
everything is buried down under.
The soldier who is made to stand there by the Emperor
adorned by the garland of victory
Is busily giving out the tales of those fallen
and the ways in which they were made to fall
releasing their visuals in photographs

Wearing all wounds the Great Land stands there smiling.
_____________________
9.12.2009 (Thanks to Pongu Thamizh)

A poem in Tamil by Deebachelvan titled PERUNILAM: KAAYANGALAI ANINDHU PUNNAGAITHUK-KONDIRUKKIRADHU

Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

WHAT DO THE CHILDREN WANT?

The children have got their wide range of responses
from the query of the Emperor.
In the street elongated in a maze
all the children entwining their hands, ask
what the children want
Listening to the query
The Emperor responds saying
that it is the Time being offered by Him.
With he saying further that
it is prosperous and so full of Liberty and Equality
the Children begin their queries
from the very words of the Emperor.

The Emperor has applied his smile of absolute power
on all the syllables and words
and he turns towards the children
the face that turns them terror-stricken.
In the book designed by his numerous brains that
exploits and swindles the world of children
He speaks of children and children alone.

He who had snatched away and plundered everything
from the hands of children
He who has shaped the monstrous Time
that has plunged the children in terrible gloom
declares that he is going to gift the prosperous Time
of Cruelties to the kids.
The children know everything.

The children do not want
that Power that shrouds everything
and allow them to rot
all the while scattering on all sides
a Smile
The children do not want
the aims and objectives that
devovouring one’s natural self
imprisons with all too evil schemes
The children do not want
those thoughts that have gifted Curses
and destroyed Histories
and have become so wide-spread
The Emperor keeps wounding
the children’s tender hearts
with his responses
and their eyes
with his smile.

________________________

A Poem in Tamil by Deebachelvan titled

KUZHANDHAIGAL AASAIPADUVADHU ENNA?

Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

THE BOY WOULD COME BACK

Just the way his mother believes
Just the way his father and brother believes
Let us also believe that he would come back.
But, where are those ways today?
It was with many children
many little boys
that he had disappeared.

My dear friend!
The whole stretch of the Great Land
has tasted defeat
with the blood of children everywhere.
In the elegies and obituary-notes being written
all too unexpectedly
I had to write one for him too.
Having to write elegies for kids and little ones
causes pain unbearable as a terrible Curse.
That your words were waiting for him, I know

You were searching some detention camp
and some prison
running from one to other.
Someone had seen
his torn pants.
That the shells would swallow children
and kill them
That boy knew very well.
Witnessing all the deaths taking place
right in front of him
He remained terrorized to the core.

Will our little ones smile again?
In the land where he was dissolved
Ii what hues and shades will the flowers bloom
Hence forth?
Oh, where would he have taken and preserved
His face and smile?

My dear friend!
Please keep the books for him.
Completing all his exercises and home-work
He would return to class.
That he would return, retrieving all that had been kept hidden
Let us also believe.
____________________________
(To Dharmegan who was killed in the War)
A poem in Tamil by Deebachelvan titled
ANDHACH CHIRUVAN THIRUMBI VARUVAAN
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

THE PAGE THAT WAS KEPT CLOSED FOR THE BLOODY DIOLOGUE

A poem in Tamil by Deebachelvan titled

RATHAM VADIGIRA URAIYAADALUKKAAI MOODAPATTIRUNDHA PAKKAM
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan
___________________
O1

Though I thought of
writing down in some form of note
the all too secret a call
that shuts all the doors real tight
I wrote and sent it in a brief sms
which would reach belatedly
and I wiped off
the blood streaming down my face
in utter secrecy

covering everything with the help of very thick ‘padangu’
I remain quiet, not revealing any of the
actions being initiated against me.

For three hours networking was closed.
Yet again I searched for
Real dense words.

That the drawings in our ancestral house
and the big bold words engraved there
are indeed very peace-loving
- so I have told them.
All the telephone-calls that came my way
I was sending back.

Hereafter nothing will be told to you
Through these Poems.
The dialogue that I had in that blood-sucked and dried-up carpet
The blood that flowed in the words and lost for ever
I have no intention of sharing any of those things.
This page wherein the explanation is to be given
remains empty.

02

My friend and Myself went on laughing
during all those
terrible words
we were throwing away the eyes
and the misery of defeat
that have come to spread upon our face
under the fence
and through the thorny wires
into the adjacent ‘Kaani’.
They were swallowing us
in a demonic speed.

The way the riffle piercing our face
tearing and engaging us in a diologue
sucking our blood
We won’t tell these to anyone.
That none threaten us
- so we have issued a statement on our own.

After the dialogue
for how long
these all too terrifying words
would be seeping behind this Motor-cycle.

That the actions initiated against me
proved so very sweet -
I had written on that late evening
at length in this page.
My friend and Myself
are not going to tell anything about the blocked website
That we have observed about Time proving
real sweet and great
for all things concerned –
so they hold about the bloody dialogue of that day.
-----------------------------------------------------
(25.11.2009)

YET AGAIN MOTHER HAS ANNOUNCED A DATE

A Poem in Tamil by Deebachelvan titled
AMMA MEELAVUM ORU THIGADHI ARIVITHIRUKKIRAAL
TRANSLATED into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

___________________
The dates marked in n the calendar having days utterly spent out
Are losing the hues and shades applied on them.
That arrangements are made for home-coming -
Mother has announced yet another date.
In the house of someone
Our food is being cooked.
On the evening of the day before when it was announced
that Mother’s application to leave was accepted
I bought and kept ready the rice and
vegetables.

Along the path where the rotten buses that have
long since completed their life-span
covered from head to food in dust
keep coming along
In a bus that refuses to move ahead
Mother comes
Tying tight her hair that is yet to grow
comes kid sister
This city is singing about their smile
that has been eaten away by the scorching Sun.
The paths of the city branch out
in different directions.
While bringing Mother along
who keeps on waiting
with the dates going past
holding the refugee-bags
verifying the landmarks
bearing the burdens of Time
the people of the Great Land keeps wandering.

That there is no home to return
nor any address for letters to reach -
Mother keeps saying.


As a wandering refugee with no home
Nor address
I bring the bag with my attires which was kept
in someone’s house
to another someone’s place.
Each and every house
Each and every street
turning into miserable refugees
we keep wandering.
While coming from one city to another
I am getting displaced again and again.
In the earthen pot of someone unknown
the lunch is getting ready.
Right from the heavy carry-bags
everything is sharing and distributing words.

In the city full of wandering refugees
Mother says that we would surely return home
and gives yet another date.
In the evening hours the dust-covered bus collects
the refugees
and sets out in the direction of
the detention camps.
______________
(From the city of Vavuniya – 16.02.2010)

THE HOMELESS CHILDREN SLEEPING IN THE GARDEN

A Poem in Tamil by Deebachelvan titled
POONGAAVIL URANGICH CHELGIRA VEEDATRA KUZHANDHAIGAL
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan
__________________________
When their eyes are filled up with sleep
the children come to the garden
where entry is free for the kids.
The boy who has lost his hands
begs for an artificial limb
with the remaining bits and pieces.
He keeps wandering, carrying along
the dream for hands.
Converting into photographs his mangled face
and the fragment of his severed hands
He goes on asking for help
Everything remains deep in slumber
far away.
That boy, added to the loss of his hands,
has lost his smile too.

When the nine year old little girl
who has gone to School
is being gang-raped by
wild animals called army-men
these children are fast asleep
in the garden en route.
Text-books and note-books of children
are all blood-smeared and drenched.
These children eyeing the ice-fruit
are wishing with all their heart to have it.
With blood dripping non-stop
the fruits are being eaten away by Time.
They keep sharing among themselves
the whole lot of violations.

The world snatched away from the children
in a terrible scheme
of too great a magnitude
and sabotaged beyond repair
The world of children torn and thrown away
so thoroughly destroyed,
their dreams nipped and ripped apart
in an all too expensive plan
are being torn and thrown away gleefully
by the Monkeys
that keep telling tales in the garden incessantly.
When evening sets in
the homeless children
keep going back somewhere.

Throughout the day
the homeless children were playing
by my side.
With their Smiles and Hopes and Mercy
for the new world
they went on filling up
the applications.

And all those appeals
that the children were
writing and forwarding all through the day
have been thrown away in great haste
as part of the heap of garbage
into the disintegrated railway-lane.
Seeing the way blood seeping
out of the books brought by their off-springs
the Mothers begin to agonize.
The trees of the garden
where the children slept and left
are withering away and falling.
_______________________________

SHE HATES THE ROTI-SLICES

A Poem by Deebachelvan in Tamil titled
ROTTITH-THUNDUGALAI AVAL VERUKKIRAAL

Translated into English by latha ramakrishnan

________________________
She tells those kids holding ‘rotis’ to shun them.
Whenever they raise their food-bowel
‘rotis’ alone come to fall right in front of her eyes
The rotis rusted and frozen are smelling there always.

The whole night they had to be in the bunker
With the blood circulating dangerously
fast
“The children could have stayed behind
not wanting the rotis’’
_ So observes the mother.
None stepped outside.
In the very second steps of the bunker
the stove remained burning.
Writhing in hunger
The children were waiting for food.
Ma was preparing, one by one,
the rotis.
With the first roti roasted
One by one the children were getting their share.
Then, mother’s roti was getting roasted
On the tin-sheet.
All too easily the shell tore apart
The roti, tin and dad.
With father’s blood
the night had turned all drenched
and bloated.

In the ‘rotis’ of one and all
Blood came to spill over and scattered everywhere
The children listened to those tales about rotis and turned shell-shocked.
The children who have read
different tales in different forms
go on staring at them, not eating.
_________________________
(12.11.2009)

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
___________________

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.

_______________________

THE KING DENOUNCED BY THE DEFEATED PEOPLE

A poem in Tamil by DEEBACHELVAN titled
THOERKADIKKAPATTA MAKKALAAL NIRAAGARIKKAPPATTA ARASAN

Translated into English by latha ramakrishnan
_____________________
We had been defeated from Time Immemorial
The Great Grand Emperor defeating the
hapless people who had denounced him for his
deeds that smelt of foul Power
has ascended the throne.
It is from deceptions that he has won a Wholesome Form
The faces have been burnt for all times
Who have won
and who have lost -
The children begin to declare
Before all the kings
Before all the victories
Before the results too we have lost
Our Sky crashes down.

In the Seat made of many a deceit
The Great Grand Emperor sitting,
From the Time of Fear
Into the Emergency Period of
Terror and terrible suppression, annihilation
we are(un)settled in.
This too has settled as a cursed evening
Destroyed to the core
by Assurances, guarantees
exploited by Agreements and Treatises
and thus cheated as never before
In the bitter rivalry of Power
The very Life has been torn and thrown away.

For everything
we are going to kneel down before him
He who has devovoured voices
sings on our behalf
He who refuses to listen to words
would be strewing words all over tomorrow
He is going to smile again
He is going to curse us in our own-tongue.
The crops to sprout are lost forever
The fertile Time, he had fed upon.

The people are losing from the very beginning.
From thee fallen generation
There is not even a tiny gap of Time to do anything
with an iota of earnestness.
For our street and courtyard
We have to beg him.
For us to live on we have to
serve him in return.
At frist
We had met with a colossal defeat amidst ourselves
And, since then we have been losing out to them
steadily.

Directions, Moments, Words, Hearts,
Spaces, Holes
as separate entities
are being sacrificed.

Time is determined by him
In the Great Grand Emperor’s grazing ground
as meek goats
with no directions nor dwelling sheds
We keep wandering
Blocking the words he has tied the mouth shut
Today someone has won
someone has lost
Losing Time forever, children are being deceived
day in and day out
Defeat pursues us from time immemorial…
__________________

THE SAME THORNYBARBED WIRES, THE SAME NIGHTMARES

A poem by Deebachelvan in Tamil titled
ADHE MUTKAMBIGAL ADHE BAYANKARAM
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

_____________________________________
All Announcements are over.
The News and the Images have
made one and all believe.
Inside the same thorny barbed wires
My Mother’s face remains
withered and shrunken.
Younger sister’s hair has not yet grown.
Between us the same thorny-knots
That insist on wounding with a vengeance
My Mother’s too rare a smile.
They keep on tearing apart
the book in my little sister’s hands.
For my sake Mother had come
Carrying ‘Pittu’
The boundaries of Long Wait,
The dream of returning Home,
The hope of going back to the City-
Mother has inserted them all
in those thorny barbed wires.
In the night when ‘Nulumbugal’
Take away the tent
with bulbs fixed on the thorny fence
in the same tent that has
ceased to be one
folding her legs
My Mother huddles.
My Mother’s request for permission
to go to the shop in the distant city
has been rejected.
At the entrance
which allows not to go closer
and embrace
It is written that the
doors of the Detention Camps
had long since thrown open.
And, the Thanks offered profusely
in the Dailies and Journals
for opening the doors of the
Detention Camps
are being ready by many,
including my own self.
Of the thorny barbed wires
we have spoken
iquite a lot indeed.
All announcements and
uprisings are over.
Inside those fences
surrounded by those thorny
barbed wires
that we’ve been speaking all along
I saw children playing.
________________________________
(02.01.2010)

THE FLOWERS OFFERED BY US FOR THE FRUITS BROUGHT BY THE EMPEROR

A Poem By Deebachelvan in Tamil titled
ARASAN KONDU VANDHA PAZHANGALUKKAAGA
NAAM VAZHANGIYA POOKKALL
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

___________________________________
The Emperor has come with fruits.
Yesterday he was throwing
all over the field
the fruits plucked in the War.
I ask even now
to give back those trees which have their rightful place
in our fences
and also the dolls of children.
My dear, affectionate People!
with our napes bleeding
all that this field asks for-
¬it’s you who have created.
Our appeals
and the Emperor’s deceitful promises
are hidden in the poisonous fruits.

Oh, Our Father
who keeps worrying over our days
froze in sorrow,
One day when the children
were hiding in the bushes
getting up in the well of night
carrying a Cross, oh, how
You were beseeching, appealing!
In front of us
it was but the mutilated bodies of children
that were piling up.
When the King ordered that
all the children should be butchered
with immediate effect
and threw into the cellars all the people-
For those hapless children and people
You were doing penance and praying,
pleading with God…

For children who were writhing in
indescribable agony
separated from parents,
staying in rooms brimming with sorrow-
My Father, who gave
Food and Words to them -
Oh, what are you going to tell
your lone child
about the Emperor’s fruits?
To disrobe us and scrutinize
To tear off our attires and make us run in the nude
It was the King
who had issued Ordinance.
And, we have honoured him
with the prestigious ‘Ponnaadai’.
Our compulsions and cursed life
continue to kill one and all.

He who had mutilated our Dreams
Who had snatched away Our Land
Who had plundered our streets and lanes
Who had built monstrous prison
on children
Who had been washing his face in
People’s blood
has come bringing fruit
plucked in the War
in basket woven with
treacherous weapon.
And, we too had eaten them
and thrust them into the hands of
our Children
and gifted him
with fruits drenched in
the deluge of people’s blood.
The Emperor leaves
with his hands full of lovely flowers.
_______________________________
(10.01.2010)

THE MOTHERS WHO ASK FOR THE BICYCLES OF CHILDREN WHO ASK FOR MILK-POWDER BAGS

A poem by Deebachelvan in Tamil, titled
PAALMAA PAIKKATRUKKALAI KOERUM KUZHANDHAI GALIN
THUVICHAKKARA VANDIGALAI KOERUM THAAIMAARGAL

Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan
__________________________________
For trying the cradle made of cloth
for children
They went around requesting everybody.
Having their children in the rear-seat
of their borrowed bi-cycles
they go.
Tales abound in the pages of books
that they simultaneously play the roles of
Mothers and Wives.

About widowed female students
and those separated from their husbands
I have written very many letters.
In their letters written to me
tears swell and overflow.

With children waiting for long
wandering in search of houses
in vain they return in the evening hours.
Taking hold of their child and books
with great care
they drink the tea that remains
acutely restive.

All that they ask for
are milk-powder bags for their children
and books.
Boiling evening time.
Seems like the Sun, going down,
has fallen into their tea-cup.

How many days have gone since we began to
stay in our relative’s house?
Right from morning the child keeps on crying.
In the book
the houses sprout and multiply
marvelously.
In the centre of the book thrown open
cycles
and milk-powder bags lie in abundance.
Spreading the evening and mother’s book,
wide-opened,
the child keeps on reading them.
_________________________________________

ONCE UPON A TIME THIS DAY WAS WITH US

A poem in Tamil by Deebachelvan, titled
‘MUNBORU KAALATHIL INDHA NAAL ENGALIDAMIRUNDHADHU
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

______________________________
In the dry branches of
the tree where no bird comes to sit
fruits would sprout and turn ripe
_ So we hoped.
Mother, did you see those birds anywhere?
In the courtyard that keeps falling down
on our heads
there are no sticks now.
This year
smashed our house and took it away
in wagons
and also kept on unfolding, one by one
nothing but fear-filled days.
Except for a mere one or two sticks
nothing remained.

In our village forgotten by birds
In our city where cycles were
broken and turned paralyzed
For serving a smile
For coming together and
having a cup of wine
Oh Mother, who at all is there?
In your hands, the tea-cups
which bring the evening from yonder
are not to be seen
And in the bus
which goes through
the village of no return
and city of no halt
I’m going to travel
Tomorrow.

This day brings back to mind
just the sweet days alone of last year
The night bursting
would be over in a short while.
Someone or other come and go
Something and all lie in front of me.
In this year which has ended
we have suffered a heavy loss.
Speechless my cycle wanders
in streets and lanes
that my houses searches for
Once upon a time This Day
was with us.

Will they give back to us -
The birds
the barren tree, our house beneath it?
With the barren tree burning
and turning into ashes
the birds lie buried deep down.
In the countryside with houses dissolved
no landmarks remain.
I keep asking for the Smile and words that were
with me, on this day
Once upon a time.
In the great land the New Year
is brought along past midnight.
-------------------------------------------
01.01.2010( Peru Nilam)