“Lent Birds” and Other Poems

by Feby Joseph

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Rumah Batas - The Translator (2024), Wood, twig, leaf, coconut influences, metal weight, rope, brush, and limestone.
Image description: An installation—made out of organic materials such as branches, twigs, and leaves—resembles an organism with antennae and a long tail. A slab of branch makes up most of its body; on its left end, two pieces of dried leaf and other materials are tied together with rope, pointing down. The elegant, abstract structure is balanced precariously on a rock, against a dark-gray background.

Lent Birds

and at dawn they wait by the waters… Sea-birds – 

Snowy pier ornaments walking on stilts; masters of fishing

moving their oblong bodies in awkward grace as an ocean ballet

enters act 2 – we leave a cold church on a cold Lent.

In a sleepy winter-chained sea town woken by the cries

of salt-encrusted Sea-Giselles, Matthew and his fishing words

ring like fading bells as my son longs for chocolate and peers into

the display window of deserted sweet shops.

I mentally covet a chicken sandwich, quietly – but, not

quick enough, as my dead father comes by to pinch my ear;

I dream of his spicy roasted duck that flavored our Easter table

and from my curried memory, I succumb…

At a sea-staring table in a silent café, we devour pies.

As another sea-bird leaves a sleeping boat to walk on water

and snack on silvery fish; my son giggles through chocolate lips

and says, “Jesus must have been a crane!”

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Rumah Batas - The Translator (2024), Wood, twig, leaf, coconut influences, metal weight, rope, brush, and limestone.
Image description: An installation is made out of organic materials such as branches, twigs, and leaves. These elements are balanced atop each other to form elegant, sweeping lines. The structure is balanced precariously on a rock, placed on a wooden platform and against a dark-gray background.

Why It’s Difficult to Write a Poem about My Hometown in English

I could write about trees – Rubber, Teak, Cashew,

Coffee, Coconut and a million other nameless giants

or about the different shades of damp untarred roads –

not terracotta, yet oozing fresh orange blood; a study

of the Kerala monsoon – cut, cross-section; my pen

copying out flow lines of afternoon winds escaping

through the sleeves of tree branches, cascading

over semi-dry leaves and chimney smoke and birds and

watercolour flowers traveling in postcards and the taste

of curling scripts, my people savour – curried fish… 

I taste the sharp angles of English: crisp, pineapple-sweet

and tart in my mouth, yet it cannot compare…

I miss a vowel that has the mobius curls of ∞

but travels a finite lover’s-distance from my epiglottis

to the back of a rolled tongue – a sound only

found in Malayalam; soft-edged and dripping with

creamy jackfruit sweetness, perfuming paper

and pen and capturing the umami of Pampadi. 

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Rumah Batas - The Translator (2024), Wood, twig, leaf, coconut influences, metal weight, rope, brush, and limestone.
Video Description: The video shows an installation in motion. A structure made out of organic materials—branches, twigs, and leaves—slowly pivots around the rock on which it is balanced. At one end of its main axis, a piece of wood, hangs a tip that is elegantly bound in leaves. As this structure rotates, the tip leaves fragmented ink marks on the piece of paper upon which the installation is placed. 

About My Father’s Portrait

Because we have such a tremendous capacity for relegating

things to amnesia, my mother would say, lighting a candle

every evening – Even a small ‘Thank you’ is enough,

as she would collect us from various corners of the house

for evening prayers in front of a wall of Gods.

She insisted the pale anaemic man high on the wall wasn’t

Jesus – Just a false white-man’s facsimile, lest we forget

the God’s we inherited. Likewise, she was sure, Mary

was a mocha maiden of Indian parentage; a black & white

young Jayalalithaa – Moon-faced, smiling Amma!

Her memories were alluvial & directly proportional to time

& inversely to unanswered questions – unrequited, I don’t

remember when the questions about him sedimented

deep enough to become the facsimile of an answer, or when

my father became another portrait on the wall.

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Well known in concentric circles, Feby Joseph, a part-time procrastinator, weekend-antiquarian, and a full-time piano teacher from Mumbai, is the proud owner of Florence Nightingale’s false teeth – facing east! In the spare time that he doesn’t have, Feby dabbles in poetry and hopes to do for it what Einstein did for the electric can opener. Some of his works have been published in The Bombay Literary Magazine, Zoetic Press, The Bangalore Review, and Café Dissensus.

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The fundamental essence of Rumah Batas lies in the simplicity of its existence—a mere dwelling, a house in its purest form. Founded in 2024, Rumah Batas is deeply rooted in the richness of the Malay language, where ‘Rumah’ embodies the essence of home, a space of belonging and familiarity, while ‘Batas’ speaks to the presence of boundaries—both physical and intangible. This interplay of space and limitation forms the foundation of our practice, where the house is not merely a structure but a living, evolving entity, and boundaries are not constraints but gentle delineations that shape experience and perspective. Rumah Batas is a canvas where interconnected and dynamic senses of ‘space’ bloom poetically. It is a sanctuary for conscious living, a roof for artistic exploration, and a landscape where personal and collective narratives intertwine. Here, the act of dwelling extends beyond shelter; it becomes an intimate dialogue with memory, materiality, and craftsmanship.

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