My Dulcinea De La Madura Poem by Daniel Trevelyn Joseph

Listening to Kalyana parisu song
Vaadikai marandhadhum eno?
While reading up Ted Hughes
From British Council Library,
And laptop open to go to PoemHunter site,
To check Hughes’ Introduction
To Selection of Shakespeare’s verse,
Mind travels back to late fifties
When I am sitting on the steps
Of my grandfather’s house in Madurai
Which they shared with her parents,
And she is singing this song in their front room
She was in fifth form, and in half-sari,
I in fifth standard, seven years younger.

Words and tune and images provoked sank
Into my heart, even though I had not
Seen any movie then, actually
For not another ten years
Because for Mommy, it was sin.

Years later when I was lecturer in English,
We shared the house with her
In 16, Kattabomman Street, Narimedu.
She came up one bright moonlit night
When I was alone on our open terrace
Surrounded by palm-trees with fronds
On the back of green folded long leaves
At eye-level, the moonbeams shone.

I saw her climbing up the steps
Blocked her with
“You have become too bold”.
Her face fell: after a gasp
She replied, “Guests have come: I’m bored”.

Budding romance killed brutally,
She never made a move after;
The song she sang innocently years back
Lets off vibrations anytime I hear.
Ted and Sylvia have to wait…

D T Joseph

Note: Kalyana Parisu in Tamil means Wedding Gift. It was the name of a very popular movie in Tamil in fifties. Vaadikai marandhadhum eno? means in Tamil Why have you forgotten the usual? (habit of saying in that movie 'Bye' loudly while leaving from the next house so that the lover can know that she is leaving....)