P. Ahilan :: Mithunam
From the Tamil--
Rotting Words: The interior landscape of P. Ahilan
P. Ahilan is an important voice among contemporary Tamil poets from Sri Lanka. His poems, written in response to the mass killing in Northern Sri Lanka in 2009[i], which marked the end of decades-old armed conflict, speak at the intersection of the public and the personal memories of trauma and violence. They are shaped by the complexity of human experience of violence, desolation, love, and loss.
His poems gathered under ‘mithunam’ are important registers of the interior space. The term mithunam, which derives from mithuna in Sanskrit, refers to sexual union on both physical and spiritual level, drawing multiple interpretations from Hindu religion and philosophy. This group of poems explore an intimate relationship within the language of violence, a language of the exterior in the surreal landscape of war. The morbid internal landscape of these poems is unusual in Tamil poetics; readers are forced to leave this poetic oeuvre struggling to maintain any sense of reassurance.
--GS
[i] In the last five months of the civil war, which lasted between August 2008 and May 2009, 70,000 people were killed and over 300,000 people were internally displaced. http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/Sri_Lanka/The_Internal_Review_Panel_report_on_Sri_Lanka.pdf
Mithunam
i.
The venomous gaps
of teeth open.
I am now
the awful madness
of a decimated animal.
This hatred is
inseparable from
the shaft of bodies.
Your lips ooze
bloodied pus,
my hand rips
the hair from
the scalp.
Villains, clowns
and heroes
enter each other.
I am now
an actor,
the best
of the best.
Under the bed
on which
worm ridden
overripe lust rots,
the clock hands creep,
coiling like
snakes.
ii.
The insect
fervently
chews away
tissues of memory.
Inseparable,
rotting words
cram and stumble.
I fill the bowls
with lies;
poisonous grass
in the smile.
Unknown to yourself,
the knife that
is drawn out,
riving your nerves
is not someone else’s.
Love,
is a lie;
life,
a fool’s summer dream.
Mad,
I unravel myself
in the rain.
iii.
Our daggers devoured blood.
The fetid smell of meat
sealed the room;
the sound of cruel sex
cracked open the wall,
exiting into the street.
The rotting tongue delights
in piercing the heart
with words
mixed in saliva.
Over the mountain
a flock of sparrows
and childish prattles
bid farewell.
I do not want anymore,
another day,
another night.
iv.
We savor blood.
On the bed
of fiery words
we sleep,
two corpses
on either side,
after frigid sex.
Under the sheet
of thorns,
strangers bound
by fate,
wear a dream
with worms squirming,
imagining
a parched future
with two pairs
of tearing eyes.
--Translated from the Tamil by Geetha Sukumaran
NOTES
In the final five months of the civil war, which lasted between August 2008 and May 2009, 70,000 people were killed and over 300,000 people were internally displaced. <http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/Sri_Lanka/The_Internal_Review_Panel_re...
Geetha Sukumaran, a poet and translator, is the recipient of the N. Sivalingam award from the York Center for Asian Research for her research proposal on Tamil poetry from Sri Lanka and trauma theory. Her Tamil translation of Sylvia Plath’s poems, Tharkolaikku parakkum panithuli was published in 2013, and her poetry collection Otrai Pakadaiyil Enchum Nampikkai was published in 2014.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 Poetry_P Ahilan_Geetha Sukumaran_Tamil_1.pdf | 45.41 KB |
