[Translation] Who says?

Who says
“Wait” is only a Railway Station
in western Malabar?
and that a dawn, in battle fatigue
would alight there in a coffin one day?

Who says
Memory is a musical window
opening on to ripe paddy-fields?
That it is when the sun sets there
that rigor-mortis would set in?

Who says
Trees have ceased to understand
the soulful songs of the winds?
That to rabbits and lilies
we should not reveal the death of love?

Who says
noon from now onwards
would be as heavy
as a tippler’s head?
And afternoons, like a loner’s humming,
are suffering from heart ailments?

Who says
Scooping up the childhood rains
in the cups of our palms, we are running
barefoot, on glowing iron rods?
In the end to handover our keys
to the same rains?

Who says
Men grow younger after they die?
They get transcended to another time?
The birds that went missing at sunset,
on the day of reckoning, they would return?

Who says
We would know of everything
without anyone letting us know?
And that despite knowing all,
Desist, we would, from telling anyone?

Poem in Malayalam by K. Satchidanandan
Translation by Vijay © 4th March, 2006