Email Poem

Your IP Address: 3.145.175.71
Your Email Address:
To Email Address:
Subject
Personal Note:
Poem Title:
Poem
              The Night Soil Man

			I

		Nothing sticks to-get-her like turds
                          No border line nor skin to cross
		Condescension's never a case for loss
		High birth's distilled from fermenting curds

The day dawns where sleep reigns loud
Where the pitchblack venomous karunagam* 
	slithers out from its hideout in the ox-bow 
touch-me-not underbrush 
		to make its hungry way into Vanar Kampung
Sandal-less the coarse makeshift sweat-soaked thalappa* fits
	his disheveled scalp like some portrait halo yet to hang high
Thodti* strides majestic loping down the mired mud gravel pathway
(Who defers to whom : the " cobra " or the " pariah " ?)

One is out to catch rats romping in the rafters 
	zinc-roofed one-storeyed houses
	nailed planks on cement stump stilts
The other to fetch slippery rubber pots
	laced with diarrhoeac splashes phlegm menstrual blood
	the day's un-read newsprint soaked with urine mixed 
	with spermatozoic squirts 

The spent air breathes carbide dry on the back of the late-afternoon thunder storm
	the dense morass of foliage 
the taste of mashed mango leaf 
the scent of spermatozoa durian reek
Late night cinema-goers lie clutching the blind Lata Mangeshkar hits
	piped-dreams 
	spreadeagled on stained yarrow or atap mats

The Sikh guard lays out his elaborate night-out
	at the Chinese saw-mill gate
	his un-used one-barrel rifle bedded down 
	on his string-bed
	fast asleep while the hurricane lamp flickers 
dying by dawn

Crackling frail cicada wings pizzicato symphonic
	milling frog harmonics 
	organ jamming rapping bagpipes heaving

A lone sentinel owl keeps base time 
	stalked by panther pawed musang* 
in one crook of the sprawling rain-tree's 
over-arching ghostly lumber limbs

The moon's full     pallid sick for the earth

Road lamps dim into their dull amber cocoons
	time out of time

The jungle-green sanitary van throbs discreet
	on the overgrown tarmac under-brush sidetable
	the Malay driver eyes the quasi-un-clad nightsoil women
	their paps prurient
	in sack-coloured khadar* sari cloth
	as they hover on their hinds for
	the Night Souled Man to bring in the fresh-filled  pots
	the leprous bleach of his hands and feet glint and glower
	as the whites of his never-opened eyes
	strain in the half moonlit dimness
	at every giant distracted step
				a trail of human dung streaming down 
his loin cloth


Resources
*karunagam (Tamil) : a variety of cobra ;
*thalappa (Tamil) : a variety of headwear ;
*Thodti (Tamil) : " night soil man " in common parlance ;
*musang (Malay) : wild " undomesticated " cat ;
*khadar (Tamil, from Hindi) : rough un-smoothed-out cloth.

© T. Wignesan - Paris, May 17, 2019
CAPTCHA Preview
Type the characters you see in the picture
Required