Translated by the author from his Malayalam originals

Author and Translator: C. A. Joseph
Pages: 48
Year of Publication: 2017
Price: Rs 100
ISBN: 978-93-5045-156-4 (9789350451564)

About the Author:
C. A. Joseph was a Malayalam poet born in 1910 in Padur near Trissur, Kerala. He died in 1994. A graduate in Economics, he worked in Tamil Nadu and retired as Regional Transport Officer from Cuddalore in 1965. He published sixteen books of poems and six novels. Some of his poems were prescribed as texts at the school and college level. He also contributed to Malayalam and English journals. Joseph translated some of his poems into English, a few of which are collected in this volume. They appeared in various periodicals such as The Illustrated Weekly of India, Thought, Indian Express and Indian Literature between the 1950s and 1980s.

Teaser:

All Life

November came with a blanket of melancholy
And a cold wind that beats
Quick and sharp
Like the tail of a ray-fish

And as I sat brooding
All life lay ebbing
Between the first girl who timidly waited
With reverberations of heart
For a windfall of a lover
And the second satellite*
That tortures the ever virgin space.

All life has been a longing and a questioning:
A tussle for squeezing joy and meaning
Out of unknown places and unborn time.
Here a dog of adventure
And there a man of vision perish;
Yet life spins on:
We hope that our individual cells
Will somehow be full and safe
Within the whirling honeycomb of life.

* The satellite refers to the space satellite launched around that time.

Contents:

The Loudest Colour / 9
A New Cot’s Reverie / 10
Second God / 11
On Drinking from the Cauvery / 13
The Two Signs / 14
An Alien on His Own Soil / 15
On Seeing a Shooting Star / 16
Dancing Girls and the Tamarind Tree / 17
The Worshipper in the Night / 18
The Sun and the Root / 20
School Children / 22
The Fisherman / 23
In a Workshop / 24
The Great Fishing / 25
The Poet’s Work / 26
On Leaving the City / 27
Unending Tears / 28
The End of Research / 29
The Dry Tree / 31
Two Lives / 34
This Clock and Me / 35
Still the Immaculate Love / 36
Prison / 37
The Bat’s Way / 38
Always an Elephant / 39
The Little Bird of the Heavens / 41
Mango Tree in Ooty / 43
The Traveller / 45
All Life / 46