Vivek Wrote About one Mr. S
Sivakami Velliangiri
The political parties have polished the pillars
the walking pavements have been glossed
stone has become mosaic.
Swaminathan Iyer, ex IIT, has a Sunday group
they are a restoration club holidaying to culture sites
they have perspectives on the glory of the past.
Impossible to rework on embossed marble
even the shadows of the Devanagiri script
cannot be reached by rubbing sand-paper.
But sometimes, there is a small piece of rough stone
bulging, protruding, as if eggs hatched inside:
the script is dented and you can feel if it is Telugu or Tamil.
Or in the courtyard huge pillars might lie like dead trees
abandoned, and this is where the recovery happens;
the bird brained politicians would have saved the cost
of transporting a 1010 year old piece of architecture.
Sivakami Velliangiri is a poet, born in Madras and brought up at Trivandrum, and now living in Chennai. When Sivakami Velliangiri was Sivakami Ramanathan she published her poems in Youth Times, and in various other literary journals. Professor Srinivasa Iyengar included her among the women poets in his History of Indian Writing in English (1980). She is Founder Member and Co-curator of The Quarantine Train, an online Poetry Workshop. Her online Chapbook In My Midriff https://tinyurl.com/nzk7db78 was published by Lily Literary Review. ‘How We Measured Time’ https://tinyurl.com/h38tpfz5 is her debut poetry book. Her poems appear in The Penguin Book of Indian Poets, edited by Jeet Thayil, April 2022.