to burn this city
to burn this city is
rather easy
a matchbox will do
a matchbox is quite affordable
compared to a bread loaf
you also need a liter of kerosene
even that is affordable
under the government’s faultless
distribution system
for the brave
a silent night will do: you can start
anywhere
Hanuman did
when his tail was set ablaze
towers of fire kissed the sky
a new state rose and so did
Ravana
for days he fought and found his
end
to this day
Hanumans exist
tailless
and Ravanas
and cities
and torches
and violence if a man commits
and war if it is a nation
a poem called a poem
the day i lost my handwriting
my mind faked an emptiness
the glare blinding around
possessed me
no one cared
the morn noon and night became
clearer
i whirled
the fake mind in a boundless space
few thoughts, now
and then
within me a sky of my size
i wobbled
like a screw on a swing,
the weight of
crossbeams on my legs.
raised sound
the sound has begun from the
sea from the beetle the field furthered
afar
the painting
from a word
the silence
hid from the grip of
sound
and without the silence
the sound fell in a roar
in came the
non-sound
and the whole world feared
spoke in turns:
the sound and the
non-sound
ruled and with time
learned to coexist as one
from whose edge
began
the silence
a non-existent title
i exist
not knowing i am
upon realization, i am
exists
the i that is and the i that am
spoke and spoke till i
became the i that am
i do
become the i that is
now and again, when the i that am
hides
the i that am does not
exists, the i that is
says
exactly, says the i that am
the i witnessing this is
neither the i that is, nor the i that am
only i
exist, i realized
it was peaceful when only i exist, but
upon realization,
i unbecame else
i that became and the i that unbecame
are lies, not
i am
the tamarind tree
since yesterday
they have been trying to bring down
that tamarind tree
starting with the branches at
the top—
little by little
in a bleed of leaves and flowers
the branches embraced
the brazen ground
dismorphed
the tree sucked the
sky
then they brought a monstrous
saw
scratched at the navel
in a spurt of trunk-has-beens
they toppled its tallness
into neat rows
carried them away in sturdy
carts.
among the debris
of the fallen
a tamarind sapling saw
itself
Five Poems
Atmanam
translated from the Tamil by Shriram Sivaramakrishnan
Listen to the original read by the translator:
Atmanam’s Tamil poems, at least their digital versions, are hard to find. I was fortunate to come across a Kindle edition of a collection of his poetry, which I used as a source. As for my translations, I have tried to find the sweet spot between the essence of his poetry and the cadence of his language. I began by paying attention to the ebb and flow of his lines, the way they accrue meaning over line breaks. This was necessary, for while Atmanam’s sparse writing style invited me into his fold, the veracity inherent in his poems challenged me, not just in terms of my ability to understand the aspect of meaning-making but to parse the language (Tamil) for meaning-remaking. Take, for instance, “a non-existent title.” The poem is an intense meditation on the famous Cartesian dictum, “I think, therefore I am.” But conjugation works differently in Tamil. It does not have the first person conjugate for the verb “to be,” at least not explicitly. “I” and “I am” are evoked through a single Tamil word, nāṉ (pronounced as naan). Thus, I had to work around conjugation in English. As a result, “I am” became I that am and I that is. Once I had made this adjustment, it became easier for me to morph them into further modalities: “I that became” and “I that unbecame.”
Atmanam was a Tamil poet about whom we have few biographical details. It is thought that he took his own life on July 6, 1984, apparently driven by extreme depression, although those who knew him suspect his death may have been accidental. What little is known of Atmanam comes from an article by his literary contemporary, the Tamil writer Ashokamitran in Indian Literature 28, titled “A Talent That Was Silenced by Suicide: Poet ‘Atmanam’.” As one of the prominent figures of Pudukavithai, or New Poetry, Atmanam employed, in the words of Ashokamitran: “simple non-traditional poetry to evoke a sense of universality, melancholy, tenderness, and compassion.”
Shriram Sivaramakrishnan is an alumnus of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry and a second-year M.F.A. student at Boise State University. His poems have appeared in Lemon Hound and Switchback. His debut pamphlet, Let the Light In, was published by Ghost City Press in June 2018. He tweets at @shriiram.
