Tamil Sentimental Lexicography (part 2)

A perpetual delight to shed tears leaving the Nadu
reading about a tree as a shrine, articulate Mandir,
the floor too abundant to be clean, all is grass for Nandi
and I'm flying away filled with the measured pace of Chiranbadam,
the revolt against deprivation and the color of a pagri,
out of scope in Mylapore, from which state do you come from?
My five elements, Kodumudi, and see the quick Nataraja
playing Shakti in the sands of Triplicane, so unsafe, so impermanent,
so far away from the smells of turmeric, from the Kural, from the crowds
that surrounded the fishing boat going east
across the ocean, a temple for the water and the salt
where we remove our footwear.

And a perpetual delight to see the skins smiling
around the landscape getting arab and then getting gora
Away, and inside my crops, I carry no weight
but stories that never conclude, like countries to be invented,
like all things that are not left out of Arunachala
because there is nothing like poverty but poverty,
it makes salvation in heaven impossible - for there too
there should be a thali for every immortal that perishes,
full of arousa (the Tamil origin of all rice) and full of sambar
to eat and to share, finger by finger, while we find the rhymes.

Tamil Sentimental Lexicography (part 1)

Last Sunday in Madras, koil, koil, koil, koil
a bonus Jain temple between nanak, jesus and shiva on the one mylapore side
and krishna at the end of tuktuk ride
we left our shoes in the autorikshah - in the streets that became temple
like going shoeless inside the san tomas temple full of national flags
and a christ between peacocks.
In the Jain temple, a special pooja, bowing to some random divinities
the doors had beatiful dravidian guarding sculptures and the smell was old
vanakam
Earlier around the ponds of the temple - outside it, not like in Arunashala, Tiruvannamalai,
tried to buy a Nandi for Gisel to break
it was at the vendor's improvised shrine and not to be sold
shrine and shops look the same from afar
and they look like cages
locking the pricey in

sem tonalidade

não é esperar a horta crescer, é arrancar as sementes
e por no lixo
o vento do ventilador, a água do umidificador, o fogo do isqueiro, a terra do piso de concreto do terceiro andar
e eu tenho uma ferida aberta que se corrói e sangra na guerra e em outros

abusar de um poema para vazar máguas frias

não sei nada de hortas, nunca arranquei uma semente
e já chafurdei o lixo procurando grãos, plástico e parafusos de metal
de onde vem o éter
do terceiro andar?
ontem eu fui a um templo com os pés descalços e pisei em sete farelos de prashad

ps: o templo de Natarajar, Shiva dançante, que pisa e não pisa

1729 and the Gannesh mouse

Sacred?
I wanted to be walking along the canal beside The Ramanujan Institute for Advanced Mathematics
in Chennai (it's opposite to the Cheipaulk Cricket Stadium, on a road that leads to Marina Beach).
The smell mixed with numbers in the way Ramanujan used to think of them (him but not even Hardy,
who got 120 theorems from him - but not the proofs) made me want to walk there.
Walk and carry on walking. I carry the smell with me to my clean lodge.
And miss it after the shower.
There is something in the dirty vestis that make me remember worn out talits for Jewish prayers,
but covering rather lower parts of the body, and with little mediation.
I don't like holy Gannesh in its splendour, although he is much more beautiful than St Thomas or St Francis, who would maybe promptly become an elephant on his smooth devotion.
I don't like the lord Gannesh always with too much aura for a wild elephant, circumscribed like the begging and blessing elephant in the Arunachala temple.
I don't like the cult of Gannesh in buses, tuktuks, private cars even though an elephant inspires my lungs more than the virgins.
Yet, there is a picture of him where there is a mouse hanging out under his holy feet.
Just a mouse
like several who where roaming over Shiva in the temple, looking for coconut and banana left overs.
I like the smell of the mouse in the picture.
The icon is the mouse beside.
I wanted to be walking along the canal beside The Ramanujan Institute for Advanced Mathematics
in Chennai (it's opposite to the Cheipaulk Cricket Stadium, on a road that leads to Marina Beach.)