Nakul Vāc

A Poem by Kalyanji

IMG_0248

 

Confounding
which is whose
One over one
upon the sands
Duck footprints
by the hundreds
in a trail
shepherded by
yet another trail
of a man’s footprints
that walk alone.
The river walks along
for company.

Train Graffiti – Nakul Vāc
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From Newyork Times


The No.5 train
roaring down rat alleys
slamming out the tunnel
going whop-pop onto the high tracks

Me riding the sky
in the heart of the inner city
Over the whole burnt
and rusted country

Unseen
Unknown
Making the art of the backstreets talk

The trains go rattling over
garbagy Streets
Past the dead-eye windows of
empty tenements

That have people living there
Even if you don’t see them

Now, see
Our tags
Our cartoon figures
Bright and Rhyming poems

Our art that can’t stand still
Climbing across your eyeballs
Night and Day

Flashing those colors in your face
The flickery jumping art
of slums and dumpsters
As if
they were your movie
Motherfucker

A Found Poem, discovered in  pages 440-441 of the Scribner edition of Don Delillo’s Underworld

Art, naturally

Alexander-Calder-Vertical-Foliage-mobile

 

Announcing spring
the birches hopefully shoot forth
Suerat’s pointillistic follies.

Portending winter
desolate oaks precariously dangle
Calder’s mobiles.

Only for an instant,
the raptures of art.

Then, forever,
the boring profusion
and empty ruins
of mere nature

oOo

ஒளிப்பட உதவி – Marco Mahler

அமில ஆவி / Acid Fumes

 
அமில ஆவி பறக்கிறது
கடையைச் சுற்றிலும்

ரசாயனப் பொடியின் வெண்மை நெடி
கடை முழுவதும்

கறுத்துக் கொண்டிருக்கின்றன
பித்தளை வெண்கலப்
பாத்திரங்கள்

அரித்துச் செல்கிறது அனைத்தையும்
திருகல் காமம்

--ந. ஜயபாஸ்கரன்
(சிறுவெளி வியாபாரியின் ஒருவழிப் பயணம் தொகுப்பு)

oOo

 

The shop smoldering with
acid fumes

reeks with the white heat
of powdered chemicals.

As its brass and bronze
utensils age and
blacken

A twisted lust
corrodes everything in its wake.

– Translated by

A Sangam Heroine in Boston

boston

(After Kovatattan & A.K.Ramanujan)

These spindly pine trees
are cunning:

the cessation of winter
that he spoke of
when he went through security
at the airport
is not yet here

though these trees
taking advantage of the untimely snow
have put out
long arrangements of jasmine buds
on their twigs

as if for a magical spring.