Names of Days / Perumal Murugan

Names of days
have become ruins of antiquity 
We can give them new names 
by flinging up new words
from the warehouse of language

Week, month, year
all such calculations too will go obsolete 
Even day

Instead
We shall name a day Cuckoo’s Call
We shall name a day Scattering of Snow 
We shall name a day Stone’s Softening 
We shall name a day Mountain Peak 
We shall name a day Crescent Moon

Each unlike the other, each unlike the other 
So many days

We shall name some days 
Devil’s Scream
Fool’s Grunt
Corpse’s Stench
And get past them easily

(Taken from Songs of a Coward: Poems of Exile, Perumal Murugan, translated from Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan)