Translated from the Malayalam by Nithya Mariam John
The shower was on,
and I was ruminating on the poem.
That tiny frog
which sat nonchalantly on the bathroom pipe,
croaked at me the first verse.
As I bathed, thinking again and again about the poem,
the moonlight threw at me the second line
over the door and retreated to the sky.
As I wiped the second line and placed it under the first one,
night rain, holding on to the arm of the wind,
pitter-pattered in
and shed a line, then coyly left.
The banana stalk in the yard,
touched the back of my neck gently,
with another verse, dripping in dew.
I was busily washing myself and
still contemplating the poem,
when the coffee-jasmine fragrance wafted in
and wrote many lines on my damp body, from top to bottom.
This feast of lines
side-lined the scent of soap, which hit the heart
with a song.
By the time I remembered
that I had started bathing thinking about the poem,
it was all done!
As if in answer to my anxious heart which wondered
if it was the shower or the poem that was over,
a sequel of laughter erupted,
from inside my wet and hairy forest.
Read another Malayalam poem by R Sangeetha, translated into English by Nithya Mariam John, and published in The Antonym:
Also, read three Hindi poems by Shrikant Verma, translated into English by Purbasha Roy, and published in The Antonym:
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