Travelogues of a bachelor

Orpheus, I am not listening to your music:
Gypsies are coming home to caravan;

Orpheus, I am not lingering at your riverside:
A newlywed bride is shedding her clothes now;

Orpheus, I am not sleeping under the foot of your tree:
Strangers are there in embrace at their rendezvous;

Orpheus, let the moonlight borrow your flute:
You and I, Orpheus - Let's walk under the shadow.

* * *

This night is the traveller's harp
This ambrosia, his gashes
This journey to a hill, his message
This rain descending a hill, his heirloom
This lover too is walking away all alone.

* * *

I am at the open ground for migrants
laying on my back,
watching stars and pyramids of clouds.

No gold ring in my finger
No chariot to join the suitors
No sage egging me on to wind up a bow
No bride and her maid waiting on.

I remember a song
I heard somewhere yesterday.
The river's anklets woke up
listening to a gypsy's flute.
An aroma knots up a swing
across the river and a star.

I woke up -
A band of old folks huddled around a fire
at the open ground for migrants.
Warming up in their good ole stories were-
Nalla Thanka, Dhamayanthi and Ophelia,
A brand new Arabian tale mounted a chariot.

Translated from D. Vinayachandran's poem "Oru Avivaahithante Sanchaarakurippukal"

The Path Homeward

Whither home 
for those who lost their mother!

No, they don't have any.

Or 

they find home everywhere -

boondocks, desolate shopfronts,
rail stations, awnings for Satyagraha,
where orphans watched over,
songs for refugees,
dip in the ocean at Kanyakumari,
sacrifices for ancestors at Gaya, and
along the solitary trails in Himavan.


Why so many journeys?

"Journeys are all there is - Journeys are experiences that rejuvenate the cycles of birth and impart an ego-less state of mind. The culture of journey is entwined with our countless torments and meditations...I travel a lot in personal life.  Travels through many walks of life is part of me. Long journeys are but an extension of the same. Your travels to wilderness count just the same as those that you make to a clinic or an orphanage. In reality the journey inwards are many many miles more than one ever does in external world. That is what a writer supposed to do. In a way we can define writing as an act of travel towards the star of his birth. This is not turning back of any sort. But a journey to the future."

In memory of beloved poet Vinayachandran Mash.

Note:
Translated from Poet D.Vinayachandran's Veettilekkulla Vazhi and an excerpt from an interview.