Trans: Ra Sh
He opted for humanity,
Got abandoned by humans.
With a third eye
that unbinds borders
he danced to the wingbeats
of a migratory bird
within the range of a tele lens.
He sported a beard like
an anonymous guru.
He had no disciples.
He did not frame
butterflies or
rivers or
trees.
All of them were
inside him.
He did not weep.
All eyes that he saw
or were seen in him
were wells that
brimmed over with tears.
Hunger abandoned him.
He saw old people
and mothers and children
stretching their tongue out
to touch the grain
that stuck to the footsteps
of those who died hungry.
He released his shutters
again and again
and sent forth light
over the sorrows of the world
as pain and sorrow of those
who were rendered homeless
who were cast out.
He was caught on every radar.
He did not have even a needle or
a piece of bread to hide behind.
He was the struggle of humanity
that led blind men to sight
for a resounding historic justice
with still life images.
He was a flag
flying high with the tattered rags
of those who stretched their hands
towards a dream.
He had a country,
a motherland that questioned him
for his name.
His name was Danish Siddiqui.
A name that denoted
an honest person.
He made it so premonitory
by sacrificing his blood.
No guns of honour were
fired in the air for him.
His battered face
and his heart
did not wait for it.
Anna Mary Haskal is a bright new face among the women poets of Kerala (India). Her poems reflect the new directions of Malayalam poetry penned by Kerala’s women poets.
Ravi Shanker (aka Ra Sh) is a poet and translator based in Palakkad, Kerala. He has published four collections of poetry, Architecture of Flesh (Poetrywala), Bullet Train and Other Loaded Poems (Hawakal), Kintsugi by Hadni (RLFPA) and In the Mirror, Our Graves, a chapbook with Ritamvara Bhattacharya. Ravi Shanker is also a translator whose English translations include Mother Forest (Women Unlimited), Waking is Another Dream (Navayana), Don’t Want Caste (Navayana), Kochiites (Greenex), How to Translate an Earthworm (Dhauli Books) and The Ichi Tree Monkey and new and selected stories of Bama (Speaking Tiger).
