Indian Poetry in English

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Hindi Poem By Dhumil


My Story


I have nothing to excite myself
Neither books on the art of making love
Nor talk of war
Nor soft beds
Nor legs nor night
Moonshine
Nothing

The itinerary that followed the rape
Has filled me with grief
My modesty is my need
It has often left me naked

Whenever
Wherever I go
I find bodies
Creeping towards shadows
With unmistakable insolence
There are furnaces everywhere
Everywhere people warm up their modesty
On the crumbling slopes of age
And hammer nails at different places---
That experiences may stay
People often weave among themselves
A complex pattern
That perhaps
They may survive death
Though for a short while

Whenever I have chanced to look into
The dark recesses of life
I have seen there---
A blind slope stands
Loaded with bullock-carts
On its back
( In which there are skeletons )
Though this is true---
When I am on the roads
In the midst of discussions
I chirp irresistibly
But every time I return home
In the room's loneliness
I stink
Like the foot
That has just been taken
Out of the shoe.

Translated by Ramakant

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Assamese Poem By Bhaben Barua

The Voice Of Whiteness


It's the voice of whiteness --- a blue-throated restless silence :
That's upon the peaks of life, and of death too;
Found through meaninglessness at intervals --- in lanes and bylanes, over hills and mountains.

It comes with the sun and the rains; the human colour added ---
Through the hours, through the seasons --- to the endless, senseless motions of nature;
A rainbow drawn upon the forehead by the sun --- and the rains.

Perhaps, it is what love is or the greenery of conjugality :
Touches, warmth, the murmur of memories, the pressure of enamoured fingers;
Perhaps, it is the friendship full of waiting, the blue flute of life.

Perhaps, it's the victorious flashes of the apples crushed upon the teeth of Time;
The glitter of emptiness filled with broken glasses; the ever-awake wind
Moving --- through darkness --- over deaths and snows.
Over the grasses and the scorched fields, over the flowers and pyres ---
Full of a duality --- it's the form of meaning of desire and emtyness.
Lonely, crowdful, marked with sweat and blood --- wavy, greyish.
It's a secret voice coming through the ages, through light and darkness.
In the villages, in the cities --- amidst the foul vapours, greediness,
The wildness of the uncivilised --- pained and iron-like it's the voice of whiteness...

Translated by Emdad Ullah

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Bangla Poem By Alokeranjan Dasgupta


Now Peace is Also War


I can't really make out if we're at war or at peace.

I imagine the deceased assembled at some solemn occasion,
merely sharing hand-picked novelties of grace and experience
with the sundown; yet as I sidle up really close to a sunbeam
I notice they are auctioning off the dusk.

It would be hard to say if it was autumn or winter, in a black
hole in the sky I suddenly see the tussle of the seasons,
so soft and yet so inconsequential - not as when the seasons
are engaged in an allegorical interplay and finally
one overcomes the other in accordance with the will of a biased
producer in an amphitheatre. No, they only want to reduce
perishable mankind into stillness. That is why they allow
some indeterminacy to remain in the cosmos - and that too has beauty.

However, if I'm unable to contain the limits of life
clearly within one definition, then it's a catastrophe!
at such a thought I split heaven and earth
on either side of me and watch as the cloud
approaches cautiously, wanting to stroke the haycock;
the hay too wants to say something, but since each word
would be an assault, it draws itself tighter together ?
can peace be maintained under such conditions?

Either the war never really ended, or else peace is over.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Gujarati Poem By Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh


Mahabalipuram


Man's dream here has a very sharp edge :
the hungry teeth of the dead
mark the flanks of domesticated beasts.
Staggering badly, a thirteen-hundred-year-old wind
passes between a sow's sagging dugs
and the rough fingers of yesterday's sculptors,
straining to sink inside, are tugged
into the spotted feathers of hens, purposelessly alive.
Chameleons slumber at ease in the belly of rubbish
and
slime-covered frogs poke obscene fun at God
who sits exhausted on the steps;
crabs
peeping through a cypress's dry skin
giggle like fish,
and there,
fallen like a raw black rock
on a clump of tender wildflowers,
idle Star
yawns and writhes awake.


Translated by the poet and Adil Jussawalla

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Kashmiri Poem By Amin Kamil


Zero-Bridge


This is the ‘Zero-Bridge’
away from the city and its hubbub,
rapt in meditation of the tranquil mesa,
a recluse, solitary, and stripped.

Poised on the embankment are the same-sized poplars,
as ready in a row for Id-prayers;

There, those silent and white house-boats
are being laved in the light of the waning moon,
in the eddies of the Vyath
powdered silver glistens.

This is the ‘Zero-Bridge’;
'O’, a queer dot
wherein all numbers vanish and re-emerge;
one who remains confined to closets,
cannot enjoy the dizziness of heights.

There at the top of the mountain is a temple,
man, in all times,
erects thrones for his Lover at heights;
Lord, you deserve all praise,
make the dew-drops shine as stars.

They say, there is a highway beyond the visible
leading to some unknown city;
who can escape the orbit of ‘being’
as one jumps out over a thorny fence?

Who is there to set ablaze the tree of life?
every twig of which lactates when suck;
there in the verdure of that chinar tree
is slumbering the gleam of the moon,
the late-night hour is intensely felt
as the cricket chirps.

Can at this hour my oblivious Love
remember me even in his dreams?
In early spring
even the fruitless willow sprouts.

The quiet surroundings vibrate without strings,
every note is merged with every other,
my soul also sings something inwardly.

Nature, too, has a penchant for art,
shadows give rise to a variety of patterns;
what are we, but the colour of patterns
that lose our luster slowly in sunshine?

There will be a day when shadows will vanish,
and all these multi-hued patterns will vanish,
a mono-chrome light will converge in a dot,
and, over the Vyath of life, away from the hubbub,
every person will become a ‘Zero-Bridge’.


Translated by Shafi Shauq

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Kannada Poem By Gopalakrishna Adiga


Prayer


Lord, plying the well-known pumps of heraldic praise
your hirelings bend double; others, gouty wagtails,
lick the land for crumbs; one snuffs his candle out
and seeks like an eunuch leech
the warm marshes in the cracks of light;
another sissy gives his back to the time-fed rumps
and sheathes his dagger deep. Lord, I am not of these.

Here's one who grins inside,
triumphing that his lifted lantern lit the face of dawn;
he cannot bend, this fat-faced cock of the walk :
Lord, cut open this dropsic bulge.
Sleepless water skins join night to day in his belches
drawing long paean-notes with each : run thy sickles
clean in Thy kindness through this miasmic crop,
and turn his daily bread into turning blood;
give the poison-vapours natural vents
and give every one outlets into privacy,
lest they vent their gall on paper-virgins.
More that all, teach them the first lesson
in the hygiene of mastication, two and thirty times
processed and blent in the saliva stream :
even if you do not teach them this, teach them
to learn that they have not learned. Shear the illusion
that onions bring their throats the smell of musk;
O, whenever words are blown to balloon in the Mind
pinpoint O Lord the precision of Thy truth.

Arrest the automation of the dream-sense
as it switches open all the sluices
while inaccessible giant thighs
play fast and loose; do not rouse us to self-abuse
when peris, jostle in a disembodied striptease
in the wind, and in thy infinite mercy
send us frequently reality's women; for the self
to wrestle with and nuzzle in, send real thighs and taut new skins.

At every retreat from the winds outside, do not send
for your guerrilla packs of extinct selves.
Let the guests come home with their bodies full-fleshed;
save me from the pest of the skinless guest.

See every ship to its haven, let no whale-hips swallow
the vessel, keep them going from harbour to harbour.
Keep the going poised against the coming to the very end.
Still, keep the ancestral flames of the wisdom of desire
burning clear and high, untouched by the English pox.

The taper wavers in the wind. Even electric lamps
are vulnerable to a blow. Your mountain of vapours
condenses to a seminal drop and digs into the earth
in its arrogance and spills itself everywhere.
For liquefaction's ecstasy even thorn is as grass.
For a moment's fulfilled desire, days, months, years,
even aeons of desire evaded, turned wrong side out, twisted.
Father, teach us to produce the full nine-month carnal marvel.

Teach us not to bend, and to bend;
to let the flame dig against the cheek of dawn
and to stay in patience wavering with the wind.
Teach the neighing pride of the wild horse
never to become a hackneyed colt,
give it the habit of bearing upon its back
the airy thighs of the immense world.
Forgetful of the little bedchamber upstairs,
you are the one, the only one with the seminal sap
rising to burgeon in no common loins, nor
waking to pour it between compatible legs.
Awareness such as this, my prince, is an egg
half-brooded over; let the Great Hawk
come bursting through his shell
churning the winds like a silver-gleaming staff
while the burdens loosen under your haunches.

Translated by A.K. Ramanujan

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Punjabi Poem By Amrita Pritam


The Virgin


When I moved into your bed
I was not alone--- there were
two of us
A married woman and a virgin
To sleep with you
I had to offer the virgin in
me
I did so
This slaughter is permissible
in law
Not the indignity of it
And I bore the onslaught of
the insult
The next morning
I looked at my blood stained
hands
I washed my hands
But the moment I stood
before the mirror
I found her standing there
The one whom I thought I
had slaughtered last night
Oh God!
Was it too dark in your bed
I had to kill one and I killed
the other ?

Translated by Kartar Singh Duggal

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Sindhi Poem By Krishin Rahi


Day and Night


The day is for all
The night alone is mine
The day is the fight
in which, like a soldier, I engage
along with the rest.

The night has its own essence
its zest.
It is aware only of itself and its own kin.

The day is a cup of poison
which needs must be gulped
Death levels all
Night alone breathes in Life
Distinctive in each living being.

During day, mixing with fellowmen
I lose count of myself
and shed all hope

The night retrieving this precious Me
Robes my aspiration
in a seductive dream.

The world is made not of reality alone
Dream too has gone into its making.

Translated by Tirth Basant

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Tamil Poems By S. Abdul Rahaman


Thirst


You've,
oh gardener,
chopped off
my branches
overleaping the hedge;
but
what would you do
with my roots
snaking under it ?


Self-Immolation


One
kindling
the memory of the other,
let us both
burn ourselves out
slowly :
I
a candle
you
an incense stick.
I light up
agony :
you add
fragrance.

Soon as the light is out
agony will forget me;
but your thoughts
would wheel around it.


Translated by M. S. Ramaswami

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Telugu Poem By Ajanta


Darkness Incandescent


Maybe, I live in hollowness beyond
On its tough rocks of darkness
And in its shackles of dreams.

Yet I have witnessed
Darkness flare in that hollowness
I beheld the lifeless statue's sword dance
in that incandescence.

Am I alive ?
Would I again listen to the echo of my voice
In the shadows engulfed by fire ?

I am striding across hollowness
And through the mysterious literary passages
of darkness.

I am wandering through the devastating sounds
Created by the killer in the inner recesses
of darkness.

Am I alive ?
Would I again listen to the echo of my footfalls
Amidst forests that are luminous.

I am striding across hollowness
And through the abysses of darkness
I am being swept away by the dust of dreams
Encrusting the boulders of death.

Am I alive ?
Does death denote opening of another door of life ?

When would the serpent of flame
lost in meditation aloft my head
open its eyes again ?


Translated by P. S. Rao

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Malayalam Poem By Savithri Rajeevan


I


I am not from the West
North East
South West
or from the East
I am not a mother
a happy person
misses
or a child
I am not Satyavan's Savithri
Rama's Sita
Krishna's Radha
I am not the light
encircling your head
not the wind
filled with fragrance
I am not the white clouds
blue sky
or pond of lotus.
I am not the
tears, dream
creepers or flowers.
I am not the animal
wandering in moon light
not the fluttering fish
not the wanderer
I am not the moving earth
the hard heart
truth, light
life, body
me, you.
But then
what I am
what am I ?

Translated by Santosh Alex