From “Poem without Beginning or End”
The shut-umbrella machine
The eloquent tower machine
The machine of glass & fizzled light
The one for moon manufacture
The fantasy tableaux
The five-cylindered
The one with the wire-bound animals
The poison gas and ear-popping sound machine
The machine of tar layered below genuflective water
The three-leaved machine
The twin-pillared soothsaying machine
The one to change a river’s direction
The other that bores a hole in the ground
The one whose top splits off to soar into the sky
The five keys that appear as turrets
The one that gathers
The three-face
The machine that carries another machine inside it
The old hundred-killer
The one that merges in the sky but transports
elephants camels chariots on the ground
The one made from metal found
where stars have been sown
The one to look for objects lost
on or under the surface of the sea
The machine of smoke-like-dew or dew-like-smoke
The heat attractor
That device that captures not only the appearance
but also the intentions
of whomever comes near
The one like a bird with beak open
The other like a mridangam with
the volume of approx. 63 bangs
Another an inverted earthen pot
The one that gallops like a horse
when set to work by its key
The machine of the three-beaked crow
square in shape and white in colour
that burns trees for its oil
The machine that ferries and releases pigs
The one that makes timber and
the one that makes the hands
that haul the timber
The eight-petaled rain-making machine
The light-filterer The mortar
with sieve-like holes
The one that sets fractured bones
The one that wraps a body in
the bark of the valkala and severs the limbs
The one meant for the torture and killing of deserters
Notes:
Read the note on this poem by Vivek Narayanan.
Source: Poetry (May 2022)