CELEBRATION OF LOCAL: M. ELANGOVAN

Madurai

Thrice-born Madurai
thrives for life.
Whither is gone
the rejuvenating spirit?
The ancient kingdom
walks like a ghost
through the muffled streets
of this ancient city.
What is murmured
in a husky voice?
The glory of the past?
The blurred vision of the future?
No poet to sing.
The city, called, never-sleeping city,
is in a slumber.
Nobody to awake
the still-born city.
Go ahead with your modernity.
Antique streets
filled with modern cafes,
chicken-forged city,
Mutton-chocked mouths.
Idlis and Jasmine flowers
-the icons of Madurai-
strewn on the empty Vaigai river.
The banks of Vaigai
shrink doubly
after the bird-like cranes
blunder her bleeding heart.
No water.
Everywhere blood oozes.
---


M. Elangovan teaches English at Thiagarajar College, Madurai- 625009, Tamil Nadu. He is a bilingual writer. So far, he has published one collection of short stories and an anthology of poems in Tamil. He has also translated the ancient Tamil poet Avvaiyar’s didactic poetry into English, titled, “Moral Aesthetics”. One of his collections of poems in English “Poems of Madness” is on the pipeline. He is a well known critic and theorist writing both in Tamil and English.

2 comments :

  1. a powerful poem on Madurai city. The poet, Elangovan, is at pains to see city's decay from its glorious past to present bareness, barrenness.

    ReplyDelete
  2. a powerful poem on Madurai city. The poet, Elangovan, is at pains to see city's decay from its glorious past to present bareness, barrenness.

    ReplyDelete

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