I went to my hometown For a poets’ assembly. I said: "What has changed During the last forty years?" The hill, or rather the rock Known as Iringappara Has been dug into a pond.

All the green of my childhood
The cornfields are now
Groves of coconut trees.
Poverty has begun to pervade us
Someone robbed us
Of our paddy,
Our rice and our life.
And so life is lost.

My mother buried
Under a sandal tree,
Now bones and skull.
A poet wept for his mother.
Another for his children at school.
Older poets wept
For the love lost
Between Man and Man
Death will come when we laugh.