Tales of Days and Nights

© 2005, Udaya Narayana Singh
From: Madhyampurush Ekvachan
Publisher: Vani Prakashan, New Delhi, 2005
ISBN: 8181834625

While the world is asleep
I wake up
and quietly enter
my poetry.

For it’s the only act
that binds us outside
marriage
childbirth
ritual
and all other nouns.

While the world waits
to be decked out,
I get up
and quietly enter
my poetry –
irregular
colourless
threadbare
patch-worked.

A restless trickle
down
the folds;
its odour
like a dirty cloak
wraps my body
that has been unused for long.

While the world talks of
hunger, pain, parting,
and stays in wait for instant sex,
I quietly enter
my poetry –
subtle,
ambivalent,
full of cuss-words,
erotic.

For it is the only way
she has taught me
to dream of you.

When the world wakes up
I shall sleep with you, my poetry!

Cast off your want, hurt and indecision,
for the night is passing by,
and the dawn is in sight.

14 October, 1994

© Translation: 2006, Udaya Narayana Singh with Rizio Yohannan Raj
From: Second Person Singular
Publisher: Katha, New Delhi, 2006
ISBN: 8189020579