K.Satchidanandan

Prof. K. Satchidananadan, former Secretary of the Sahitya Akademi(the National Academy of Letters, India), is an internationally recognised poet, critic, translator and editor. He has 22 collections of poetry, 16 collections of translations of poetry, 20 works of literary criticism including two in English, 4 plays and 3 travelogues to his credit. He has received 21 awards at regional, national and international levels, including the Kerala Sahitya Akademi award four times, India-Poland Friendship Medal from the Govt. of Poland and Knighthood of the Order of Merit from the Govt. of Italy. and His collections of poetry have appeared in 16 languages including English, French, Italian and German. He has edited eight journals including Indian Literature, Sahitya Akademi’s bimonthly and several anthologies of poetry, shortstories and essays in Malayalam, English and Hindi. He has traveled across the world, reading and lecturing and represented India in several international fairs and festivals including The Sarajevo Poetry days, Berlin Literary Festival, Frankfurt Book Fair,Leipzig Book Fair, Paris Book Fair, Lahore Book Fair, The Indo-Arab Literary Festival at AbuDhabi, The Festivals of Culture in the USSR and in China, Writers’ Exchange Programmes in Syria, France, Italy , Sweden and the U.S.A.

STAMMER

Stammer is no handicap.

It is a mode of speech.

Stammer is the silence that falls

between the word and its meaning,

just as lameness is the

silence that falls between

the word and the deed.

Did stammer precede language

or succeed it?

Is it only a dialect or

a language itself?

These questions make

the linguists stammer.

Each time we stammer

we are offering a sacrifice

to the God of meanings.

When a whole people stammer

stammer becomes their mother-tongue:

just as it is with us now.

God too must have stammered

when He created man.

That is why all the words of man

carry different meanings.

That is why everything he utters

from his prayers to his commands

stammers,

like poetry.

(Translated from the Malayalam by the poet)