I know you’re searching for hundreds of reasons

to justify all these killings—whatever.

You know, I’m simply looking for those lives

that are lost forever.

Have you ever let even a small blade

you chanced upon

go unused?

I’m confident of the spoils you collected

during your battles.

But hereafter this story

will be written by the severed thumb

of Ekalavya.[1]

And the justifications

that you weave

may be true for you,

but for me they’re lies

loftier than the Himalayas.

Now I search for the cries

that were buried under the weight of the Vedas.

I need to trace out

the black bodies crushed under your iron feet

so that all the mornings now be brightened

with a black slogan.

Who cares who am I?

When you never hear the thump of my heart

but always notice the color of my skin?

Who cares what my body is?

When it’s meant to stoop down,

to honor you!

Who cares where I live?

When I am always cast away from the village,

destined to nestle in pitch darkness.

All these lush fields now wear greenery,

borrowing my tears

and nothing remains for me.

I have lost all my breath, forever. 

Who cares how the sun rises here,

when the sunshine, damp with my sweat,

is meant to bloom a rainbow for you only?

Whoever would be me?

When my body is meant only

to be shattered to pieces

and burnt to ash?

Who cares who am I?

When my body is only to be destroyed

and thrown into the gutters!

You cut my breath as rudely, as simply

as you cut my harvest every year.

Don’t say anymore.

Your eyes are red with my blood.

Don’t pat my back

with a dagger that cuts my throat. 

My dear poet!

I know this delicate midnight breeze

keeps you occupied.

How long this slavery to white poems?

Poet,

now I’m terrified of white flowers.

In a world where my every step

touches upon a bloodied corpse,

I fear green fields.

Pure blue skies

unnerve me.

I’m sorry, my lord

My poem is not your slave

it’s a sickle with its head to the sky.

My poem is not a damsel timid in your moonlight

it’s a tiger prowling in a shadowed forest.

To say a final word,

My poem won’t be your grand Constitution

devoted to your happiness

at all costs.

*

[1] A lower-caste character from the great Indian epic Mahabharata. Ekalavaya wants to be the disciple of the great archer Drona who refuses him as a student because of his low caste. Drona promises Arjuna that he will make him the greatest archer on the earth, but Ekalavya surpasses Arjuna, while using a clay image of Drona as his teacher. Arjuna becomes jealous of Ekalavya. To appease Arjuna, Drona goes to Ekalavya and asks him for a gift–as compensation for his teaching, Drona asks for Ekalavya’s thumb. A sincere disciple, Ekalavya cuts off his thumb and presents it to Drona.

 Tr: Jessica Athens and Afsar

Leaving the village,

May the waters of the nearby stream

Rise to see you off, like your mother’s hand.

May the memory of sunlight

Peeking through the dark doors of night

Warm your mind during cold times.

May you allow your eyes

To hunt on both banks of the river of life.

May you send messages across the waves

In all the languages of life.

May you empty your mind out of empty lessons

To fit the beautiful views of life.

When walking on a road,

May every one of your steps

Walk across water.

Every time the crane hides

Beneath a river’s waves,

Then emerges from the water

With a quick splash,

May you see and marvel at this sight.

We are in the habit

Of locking up our minds as we do rooms.

May your thoughts navigate

The locks to freedom.

Crossing the green fields,

May you reach the faraway land,

Where the sky covers all you can see.

May you wander through this land forever,

And lose yourself in its wonders.

When reaching a village,

May the nearby stream rise to greet you

Like your mother’s hand.

May you understand the language of the trees’ bends and turns

And converse with them.

As the murmurs that are hidden reveal themselves to you,

And may you find yourself.

translated from Telugu: Harsha Voruganti

 I am some limb or organ under a head of vacuum 

It used to be moist somewhat.
When little feet got tired running here
a cool touch used to caress, like mother’s hand.
When I’d rush in, wind-like,
over bird houses of reed grass,
over tamarind trees brilliant with tender shoots,
along the thin paths stretching white among green fields,
and over the scaffolds rising in those fields,
two hands used to receive me
into a soothing embrace.
The sky, spreading wide its bulk
used to sprinkle moonlight pollen in bits and pieces
on to the long clusters of clouds.
Wherever the eyes roamed,
there a dream breathed full of life.

Someone preserved for me here,
an inexhaustible chest of words.
Someone else blew a thousand bamboo flutes
saturating the air, and left.

Same lake – now it reflects
a broken heart, in shattered pieces, why?

In its palms, I flew to far off places then.

In the evening, we’d arrive on breezy wings
walking in from a day-dream,
we’d land with the swagger of a dragonfly.
In the swirling bosom of the lake, we’d swim.
On its shores’ green spread,
we’d drape our bodies to dry.
The clothes of outer world covering our bodies,
we’d toss onto thorn bushes.

On a pitch dark evening,
as a single darkness covered up heaven and earth,
a harvest of lamps flourished here.*
Little flowered boats, emerging from maidens’ laps,
danced with shimmering heads.
The light of adolescence in our bodies
played hide and seek with the lake’s reflections.
Then, that night here
blossomed like a lightning vine,
from the youthful curves’ beauty of teenage.
How many infants’ fresh imagination breathed on it!
How many youthful tender caresses teased its shores!
Then, it used to be moist here.
But, now it is arid
like a nightmare from the bosom of shattered earth
crying out in anguish ..

 Tr: Nasy

The interrupted line sighs;

the suffocation of sudden silence;

someone pants at the rear,

fitfully.

The road flies back;

each scene flits past

along with the footsteps;

silence has so many faces.

someone walks on eithe side;

hazy, indistinct;

somebody gasps behind the shoulder;

the poem stops.

Tr: D.Kesava Rao