Southern Evening
Southern evening, with the sea wind
Swaying coconut palms gently
Against the chameleon sunset sky
And against a twilight hush and slow
Thickening of light the evening prayer
From the mosque near the sea's edge
Calls through the gathering gloom in an
Ancient tongue from across the waters
Raising spectres of trading vessels from
The West arriving row upon row down
Generations ephemeral as the waves,
Arriving, in a sudden quickening of hope
In sight of this golden southern shore and
The dense green throbbing life beyond .
Resthouse
The resthouse on the hillside
Is a white crescent carved into
Dark waves of greenery
The sunset flashing golden from
Its window panes is a lighthouse
To those who like such things
But I, who like mountains only
At a distance or in paintings, am
Content to see its whiteness fade
As night descends; I am glad to speed
Away on two wheels or four as hill
And resthouse merge into a black mass
Sinking , shrinking inexorably into
The byways of an ever-receding past.
Convalescence
I have come to a remote edge
Of tiredness, where the ship
No longer comes in to port but
Remains motionless outside the
Harbour, its lights dimly watchful,
Mistrustful. And I have come
To a sharper understanding of
Things, which I know will depart
In the slow dawning of wellness
And then I shall no longer see things
As I see them now, in stark outline
And deep shades, and I shall catch
Vainly at these as they fade
Into the stale normality of day
Shivshankar Menon, having served as a history teacher at St. Stephen's College in Delhi from 1987 to 2014, now resides in his hometown of Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. Presently, his focus is devoted to the exploration of various languages, including Russian, Sanskrit, Malayalam, and Greek.
poems of shivshankar menon