DEWY PIECES OF TORN PAPER, PANINI PUKHRAMBAM AND A NEW LANGUAGE

I knew the
We saw the
I feel eh
I will tell you the
                           Torn pieces of papers lie dew-drenched
                             in the windy harvested fields
This is not a children’s examination
He is an old man;
When the sentence is complete
The messenger from the big boat will reach this land
And the flood will go dry.

                   I is
                You am
                He are
        What the hell is your Yorick tongue prattling about?
                     
                 The dew is cold by the side of the mountain.
                   (Are you damn rats to burrow so quick
                    To follow me under the ground?
                    O I will move hence!)
                    English is a strange tongue to me
                    I am learning to string words mechanically together –
                    Nothing the I saws
                    The nothing I doesn’t knows
                    I will to say yous that
The rosy nose elongates, touches the walls
The point clattering about the rafters.
                   I wills to tell you
                                 The harvested fields are empty
                           Dewy pieces of torn paper fill the fields
      (O! Are they everywhere, the ghostly rats
     To such words from every lip, to knock things with their eye-balls
     To pluck the tongues if they prick, and hollow a cave out of the crowns?)
     I woulds to tell you note this

The linguist walks round reading the grammar of tangled roots and boughs
Parsing the morphemes of the wind through the leaves.
                 O lovely little girl
                    Who brought you here on this lotus leaf
                    In the middle of the sea of a puddle?

                The ugly mother toad and her obedient son,
                    I hate to be his bride in the marshy castle
                    So they intern me in this leafy cell without walls.
                        
                  I don’t love                 I love
                    I don’t want                 I want
                    I hate the                     I hail
The brown leaves sough confusedly without a gust of wind
They amputate the limbs of sentences.
Now waters do not flow from the springs to make meanings
The trees are brown and the air dusty.

He has many gurus who do not teach
But to learn worlds from.

A butterfly fluttered about a little auburn crow
                 Anne, Anne, Sister Anne,
                 You look so sad and homesick!

            No, no, not at all! I wait or look for none
                  Happy am I here on this tower!
                  (Set to trust none I do not know.)
Anne’s rosy nose touched the tear dampened granite floor
It could push out through the casement and knocking against the stars, The dragon at the dark corner blew fire at the winged creature
And a spark burnt the magic thread round his neck –
The grammarian had a long fall into the puddle
Frightening the little girl on the lotus leaf.
                 But
                 not happy
                 not pleased
                 freedom fighters

             (Did the earthen mouth move?
                  Do pieces of paper like in the vacant fields?)
                     
                 Mimics sing in any voice
                  They represent your voice
                   But you sing a different song to me
                   They know you sing a different song.

                  Let’s kill the rats for our moksa!

The emaciated flame dies off the dry lamp wick
The old grammarian is left in the musing darkness

Pukharambam Thoithoi