POEM BY M K HARIKUMAR

The black hole

The dried almond leaves in the notebook

The tabernacle of dew drops on grass tips
The weak and withering leaves
The fallen flowers
The corridors where we had our lunch
The end of recitals
Tunes already hummed
The discussions about books

I searched for my childhood in
flowers lying on the sidewalks
Never will I get back those youthful days
when daggers stood aloft in
the island of cosmic blues
nor could I trace back the blood red
days of my college life

I attempted to touch the nights
in the barren solitude of broken love
but they eluded me for ever

The yesterdays of passionate love
The chronicles of love drops
The promises secured after long wait
and by telling so many tales
The bond established through kisses
and sexual bliss

All have vanished somewhere;
With my hands I groped all around
Arjun went to the mountains in search of
the warmth of a bygone romance;
I contemplated Shiva in my meditation,
wept calling my mother
took repeated dips in thoughts,

Plucking of jungle fruits,
The moments in forests,
The homosexual passions
Other sexual ecstasies,
And the nights beneath mango trees.



Playhouses, bridges and tents built
in between quarrels and affection;
The momentous blossoms of
pranks, hide and seek games

Her cascading romantic strands of hair
observed only during the twilight
prayers in temples

Then the ambiguous parting ,
As words failed, dead romances
dropped from lips into black holes.

The sharp edges of silence,
The pinpoints of compassion,
All have gone for ever
Looking back there is only
void

Nothing is there in the mind
and in my immobile and ghostly physique;
All the carcasses have vanished
into the abyss of time and thoughts

trans:saj mathews