A Manifesto of Saliva
Thirty-two white wolves
stand guard.
Their lake is in the mouth.
Their vigil sharpens
until the fangs gleam
in thirty-two directions.
The water level rises
when the lake sinks into the netherworld
and glimpses tamarind trees.
It discerns thirty-two wolves.
The water level recedes.
Subsides.
Doesn’t gush forth like blood
or grapple with an opponent.
Often one pictures a flood
on the dining table.
The food fest passes by.
The noise of people chewing
sketches a fast approaching
battlefront. Nothing happens, but
the lake dries up in fear.
Goes underground
beating its head.
Distaste gets caught on the fishhook.
In a revolution saliva binds
better than blood.
No colours.
No flags.
No historical burden of extraction.
No pressure no factions.
Just a long arc of spit will do.
More thrilling than the trigger.
More thundering than swearwords.
In the history of bloodstains
there are no signs of saliva.
From her begins the gene
of desire and fear
of droughts and floods
of kisses.
I belong to the tribe of saliva.
I am she who passed by, contributing
not even a stain as memory.
On the pages turned
with a spit-wet finger
naked feet of saliva
walk away unseen.
In some places
it gushes faster than blood.
Before blood can find blood
saliva finds saliva.
Then the high alertness
of sixty-four wolves
rots and dissolves
in saliva.
outdated girl withered bra wasted panty
there stands the girl she wears a bra of faded colour the white is now pale yellow disproportionately little brown spots are visible here and there caused by moisture and staleness the edges of the bra are in shreds the straps of the bra are in shreds one of the bra straps has snapped the broken strap is stitched up with a rusty safety pin the breasts of the girl are of different shapes one of her breasts is small and the other big the small left breast does not fill the left bra cup the bra cup looks crushed over the left breast it grows pointed when she takes a deep breath the right breast fills the bra cup below the bra cups runs a finger’s width of elastic band the sewing has come off at some places on the elastic the girl’s panty is the same saffron color as the indian flag inside the panty there is a sanitary napkin soaked in blood the girl has taken off the bra and the saffron-hued panty both are wet with and smell of sweat and blood the bra without the breasts appears crushed its straps are folded the inside of the bra without the breasts now looks dark there is a spread of blue behind the straps there is black dirt on the sides of the cups there is a faint shade of soft green on the left strap starting from the back and the sides of the bra the tiny plastic squares and rings which connect the bra straps to the cups are almost broken there are blood stains on the saffron-coloured panty the dried blood has a shade that is almost like the red encroaching upon the black on the narrow middle strip of the panty and especially on its edges blood has spread thick blood has spread on the wings of the sanitary napkin too the wing of the sanitary pad looks folded inside the blood is pressed thick inside the pad the reddish black slimy blood is clotted in the middle of the pad there is blood that has spread at the back of the pad too the pad has more or less detached itself from the saffron-colored panty the saffron has grown darker with the blood spreading
Colour
When the black seeds germinate
green leaves sprout
red blossoms.
I plant black seeds.
And wish for a black black tree
with black leaves
and black blossoms.
The night prunes
all the trees into my colour
for some time
and then ridicules me
by taking their blackness away at daybreak.
The shadows call out arrogantly
claiming that they are my black trees.
Only the colour I seek
is missing.
Flowers leaves trees
in all colours except mine.
The trees keep deceiving me.
Wherever I look
the graceless green trees
of that fraudulent god
who was no artist. Not one bit.
My tree never sprouts.
The earth does not sketch it.
I am fed up
unable to translate my blackness
from the seeds
to the trees.
Damn! I no longer have any desire.
I no longer plant trees.
O my beloved black tree!
Why is there no such tree?
Three Poems
Samudra Neelima
translated from the Malayalam by Ra Sh
Read the original in Malayalam
Listen to the poems read in the original Malayalam by the poet:
All I knew about Samudra Neelima when I first read her poetry on Facebook and started translating her was that she was an upcoming young writer in Malayalam. She was completely different from everyone else. Her politics were so enmeshed in her poetry that a cursory reading could not unfurl its full range of meanings. For example, the poem “Death to the Water Cops” (published elsewhere) describes a political demonstration and the police action against it in the context of a shower bath.
In “A Manifesto of Saliva,” Neelima suggests saliva, rather than the usual blood, as the bonding agent of revolutions. Saliva symbolizes food; its lack—starvation, famine, whole populations wasting away because of the policies of the rich. Her poems evoke such looming contexts using the bare minimum of language: “Before blood can find blood / saliva finds saliva.” This is the key to the poem and the translator works around it. The translator has to be aware of the histories of revolutions and of manifestoes, including the communist one. All this is compressed into one word: “Manifesto.”
Translating “outdated girl withered bra wasted panty” poses the challenge of faithfully following the original text’s stream of words like a menstrual flow. The translator also needs to be aware of nationalist and Hindutva politics (often associated with the colour saffron), and convey Neelima’s critique in English: “the pad has more or less detached itself from the saffron-coloured panty the saffron has grown darker with the blood spreading.” The translator thinks, “This poem has to flow like blood.” That’s where the translation actually begins.
“Colours” is another challenging poem, here alluding to “black” and Dalit politics. In contrast to the dominant culture’s denigration of dark skin, the poet laments the lack of black trees, black foliage, and black flowers. She is unimpressed by green foliage and colourful blossoms. Once again, the translator must understand the political context before translating the poem.
In “A Manifesto of Saliva,” Neelima suggests saliva, rather than the usual blood, as the bonding agent of revolutions. Saliva symbolizes food; its lack—starvation, famine, whole populations wasting away because of the policies of the rich. Her poems evoke such looming contexts using the bare minimum of language: “Before blood can find blood / saliva finds saliva.” This is the key to the poem and the translator works around it. The translator has to be aware of the histories of revolutions and of manifestoes, including the communist one. All this is compressed into one word: “Manifesto.”
Translating “outdated girl withered bra wasted panty” poses the challenge of faithfully following the original text’s stream of words like a menstrual flow. The translator also needs to be aware of nationalist and Hindutva politics (often associated with the colour saffron), and convey Neelima’s critique in English: “the pad has more or less detached itself from the saffron-coloured panty the saffron has grown darker with the blood spreading.” The translator thinks, “This poem has to flow like blood.” That’s where the translation actually begins.
“Colours” is another challenging poem, here alluding to “black” and Dalit politics. In contrast to the dominant culture’s denigration of dark skin, the poet laments the lack of black trees, black foliage, and black flowers. She is unimpressed by green foliage and colourful blossoms. Once again, the translator must understand the political context before translating the poem.
Samudra Neelima is doing her M.A. in English literature from MG University, Kottayam. Her first collection of poems, Kadal, was published by Mathrubhumi Books in 2014. She writes poems regularly for social media. Translations of her poems have appeared in RædLeafPoetry.
Ra Sh (Ravi Shanker N) has published English-language poems in many national and international online and print magazines, such as Kindle magazine, the German online journal STRASSENSTIMMEN, and Indian Literature, among others. His poems have been translated into German and French. Fifteen poems appear in an anthology, A Strange Place Other Than Earlobes, published by Sampark, Kolkata. His translations into English include Mother Forest (the biography of C. K. Janu) and Harum-Scarum Saar and Other Stories (stories by Tamil writer Bama), both published by Women Unlimited, Delhi; and Waking is Another Dream (Sri Lankan Tamil poems translated along with Meena Kandaswamy), published by Navayana, Delhi. Ra Sh translated and edited translations of thirty-seven young Malayali poets for RædLeafPoetry-India in 2015. His collection of poems, Architecture of Flesh, was also published by Poetrywala, Mumbai, in December 2015.
