BIRDS COME AFTER ME
-
K.
Satchidanandan (India)
Birds come after me, as if
I were a walking tree.
I spread my crown for
them,
like the mushroom in the
Russian children’s tale
growing ever wider to
shelter
birds and beasts from
rain.
I grow many hands,
from the legs for the
parrots,
from the hip for crows,
from the belly and the
back
for the cranes, eagles,
kingfishers and owls
and tiny twigs for
sparrows and treepies.
They fruit, my head opens
out
like a tree top , and bats
hang from them
undefined, between bird-ness
and beastliness.
My hairs blossom,
butterflies looking for honey
surround my head like a
halo.
As I watch each bird turns
into a letter:
an alphabet of birds.
The wind passes between
them,
they make many
noises,
order themselves into
lines,
resound with suggestions,
change places, combine
to become something else,
sing and tell stories.
Vanished hills and forests
crowd their memory,
dried up pools and
streams,
roofs and telephone cables
with
screams passing through them
and the scalding grammar
of electric current.
A tree is a dictionary of
leaves.
My branches fill with poems,
the history of clouds*.
(Translated from Malayalam by the poet)
*A Histroy of Clouds:
the title of a new collection of poems by Hans Magnus Enzensberger
****