Separated from the wing,
a feather,
on air’s unending
pages, writes
a bird’s life.
Still unbroken,
a bubble
slips away,
to survive
in the river.
Becomes a fistful
of ocean,
as its petals unfurl,
bud, bursting.
Poetry –
the tail, twitching to let go?
or the body, in which life remains?
Acknowledgements
Image credits: © Matthijs Kuijpers. Gran Canaria blue-tailed skink [ Chalcides sexlineatus]. The celebrator biologist and photographer notes that the “….Gran Canaria blue-tailed skink is endemic to Gran Canaria island, Canary islands, Spain.”
Translator | Meenakshi Visvanathan
Meenakshi Visvanathan translates from Tamil into English and writes in English. She has a B.A. from the Department of Communication Studies at Mount Carmel College. She likes to make jewellery, cookies, and clothes, among other things. She is currently pursuing an M.A. in English. She lives in Bangalore.
Author | Pramil
Dharumu Sivaram, better known as Pramil, one of his pen names, was born in Sri Lanka in 1939. He moved to Tamil Nadu in the 1970s and spent most of his life in Chennai. He began his career as a painter and sculptor, but soon began writing. By the age of twenty, his reviews, poems, and stories were being published by literary magazines. He is regarded as one of the most prominent figures in modern Tamil literature. After his passing in 1997, his writing has been compiled and published across twenty-one collections by Kaala Subramanian.
