[Transcreation] Stairs

1.

It’s a Poem

that’s climbing the stairs,

inebriated.

A while ago, it was at the grocer’s

Before that, at the Town Hall


It wears silence as a virtue

Keeps laughter at bay

Doesn’t bend knees or wash face

Doesn’t know how to sit

Its sprawled on the road now,

after a plunge down the building,

in a thousand pieces



2.

….and the one alighting the stairs

is a Story

Melodramatic to the core

Contemporary in substance


Hurriedly, it gets into a car

with a critique in tow

and speeds off to nowhere



3.

Stairs is merely a metaphor

A metaphor of disaster,

where one gets shattered

in the climb and descent


The careless may

get dizzy, tired of a climb,

can fall, get hurt in a descent


Even with the explanations,

Stairs still remain doormats

for an ungrateful reader



A poem in Malayalam by Sohrab

Transcreation in Malayalam by Vijay © 22nd December, 2007