ലാബിലെ പൂച്ച

The cat in the lab
by
Mohanakrishnan Kalady

He will come one night
Through the broken glass pane
And will enter the lab.
Pipettes and burettes
Will not block his way.
The ghosts and mice
Who have come to steal glucose
Will be burnt to ashes
Before his laser eyes.

Holding his erected tail high,
He will trample on conical flasks,
Reek hard on chlorine and
Overturn the bottle of
Concentrated sulphuric acid
And lick it to his heart’s content.
He will hug and kiss lead iodide,
Sedimented in yellow
And lie with bromine,
Stripped of her glass costumes.

Then taking a deep bath
In petroleum ether
He will wait,
Wait in the bitter cold
For a flame of fire.
He won’t hesitate to come,
He, whom we have sent out,
For the felony of winking
At a test tube.
Translated by K T Dinesh