The Simplicity of My Congenital Thirst
The pale fingers grow
Like hair
On the edge of my amnesiac
Skin reaching out
To the dried skeleton
of sky
The simplicity of my congenital thirst
Branches out of my pores
Shedding
Its eyeless brown leaves
On the famine
Of my earth’s black mouth
The parched sky peels off
Like a cheap blue paint
The decrepit arteries
Of the desiccated soil
Crumble like the ruined drainages
Of the extinct civilizations.
My stultified heart is a palm
Whose fingers have come off
But it can still hold nothingness
Like Shiva’s translucent semen
It can still keep count
Of my deaths with its mute thumb.
I have planted
The stillborn foetuses
Of my eyes
Near the ancient roots of peepal
The male rocky hands
Of the last earthquake
Will awaken
Their disfigured faces
They can still startle you
By sprouting from unlikely places
S
achin Ketkar is a Marathi bilingual writer, translator and critic based in Gujarat, India. He works as Reader in the Department of English of The MS University of Baroda and as a contributing editor for New Quest, a journal of participatory cultural inquiry based in Mumbai. He holds a Doctorate in Translation Studies and has translated and edited Live Update: an Anthology of Recent Marathi Poetry (Poetrywala Publications, Mumbai, July 2005). He has also translated contemporary Gujarati short story writers like Nazir Mansuri and Mona Patrawala along with Gujarati poets like Narsinh Mehta (15th century AD) into English. Apart from two collections of Marathi poems (Jarasandhachya Blogvarche Kahi Ansh published in 2010 and Bhintishivaicya Khidkitun Dokavtana published in 2004 both by Abhidhanantar Prakashan, Mumbai), he has a collection of English poems titled A Dirge for the Dead Dog and other Incantations (Sanbun Publishers, New Delhi, 2003).
The pale fingers grow
Like hair
On the edge of my amnesiac
Skin reaching out
To the dried skeleton
of sky
The simplicity of my congenital thirst
Branches out of my pores
Shedding
Its eyeless brown leaves
On the famine
Of my earth’s black mouth
The parched sky peels off
Like a cheap blue paint
The decrepit arteries
Of the desiccated soil
Crumble like the ruined drainages
Of the extinct civilizations.
My stultified heart is a palm
Whose fingers have come off
But it can still hold nothingness
Like Shiva’s translucent semen
It can still keep count
Of my deaths with its mute thumb.
I have planted
The stillborn foetuses
Of my eyes
Near the ancient roots of peepal
The male rocky hands
Of the last earthquake
Will awaken
Their disfigured faces
They can still startle you
By sprouting from unlikely places
S
achin Ketkar is a Marathi bilingual writer, translator and critic based in Gujarat, India. He works as Reader in the Department of English of The MS University of Baroda and as a contributing editor for New Quest, a journal of participatory cultural inquiry based in Mumbai. He holds a Doctorate in Translation Studies and has translated and edited Live Update: an Anthology of Recent Marathi Poetry (Poetrywala Publications, Mumbai, July 2005). He has also translated contemporary Gujarati short story writers like Nazir Mansuri and Mona Patrawala along with Gujarati poets like Narsinh Mehta (15th century AD) into English. Apart from two collections of Marathi poems (Jarasandhachya Blogvarche Kahi Ansh published in 2010 and Bhintishivaicya Khidkitun Dokavtana published in 2004 both by Abhidhanantar Prakashan, Mumbai), he has a collection of English poems titled A Dirge for the Dead Dog and other Incantations (Sanbun Publishers, New Delhi, 2003).
