Translator: Crazyfinger

Translator's Note:
A friend of mine alerted me to this new poem by Afsar, asking if I wanted to give it a shot translating it during this weekend. Here it is.



1

Will the sunlight blazing outside
Know of the darkness inside!


The voice
Strolls into stillness for a breather
For a while, to come up for air

-2-

In between the tangled embrace of the trees
A white streak, opening slightly
Leads into somewhere
Its signs in my ears
Ever a dulcet music

-3-

In between the huddled houses,
Intertwined thicker than the woods
A narrow alley
Sparkles like a moonshine
The roar of its silence
A storm that hasn't spoken


-4-
You and I
One moment the screams of two ripples
Then in another moment,
Dreams snuggled
Under the covers of sleep

-5-
As such the petitions were always losing!
Anyway haven't got in hands
The rope bucket
To bail up the deeper voices

-6-

Be it a word that lay severed
Or a cry that lay fallen
Don't make the final cut on any of it!

-7-
Save these few morsels
For the empty stomach
Of that troubled pit
That arrives from far away

(Original poem in Telugu: "naalugu metukulu" published in Poddu.

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 either side;

hazy, indistinct;

somebody gasps behind the shoulder;

the poem stops.





Translated from Telugu by D. Kesava Rao

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

I am some limb or organ under a head of vacuum

From whence I was born, how I grew up,

Just at 47 how I blew up,

Since none of you told me anything ..



Every limb of God you butchered and divided up

Amongst yourselves, or robbed it perhaps,

Since all of you didn’t leave me anything ..



I am a shadow sans body,

A soul delivered in shame and

Thrown away over some wall.


I roam through country after country

I imagine that all countries are mine

Each hamlet each home, I imagine mine, but

Even a bee is unable to tell my address.


Somewhere here, saffron hands are cutting away

The piece of land under my feet.



From somewhere there, all the dust from demolished domes

Settles on my fluttering body, building up a tomb.


Covering up my eyes with eyelid blindfolds,

Someone is pilfering the cool flesh of my body.


I turn into a corpse unrecognizable to me,

I crash onto the bloody roads of Bombay.


It’s not clear who is crossing over me which way.


Truly, the resident of a vacuous world I am.


Everywhere, any time, a migrant I am.


Drowning half of me in darkness,

I imagine the other half is all brilliance – such delusion I am.


I jump into the inner spirals within myself

In order to murder the soul of time, each and every moment.


I won’t ask for half a kingdom or the state of Anga (1)

I don’t have a tongue to ask for my own torn nerves back (2)

Does the corpse have some land to hide in? But for the living,

A piece of land is enough, a shade over the head – this I proclaim.


The spot you stand on – that’s the most holy place.


Come, divide me by myself, I say,

Not by forty seven.


All my laughter, my cries

My insults, my doubts

My rapes and my murders

They’re all yours too! I say.


This is my mother’s womb-water! Don’t spit in it – I pray.


Oh my enemies who divide and rule!

No one can split me into two

No one can blast the pupils of my eyes.


*******************

Notes: (1) anga raajya: the kingdom of Anga. When Pandavas and Kauravas are displaying their prowess of martial skills, Karna steps up to challenge Arjuna. To prevent a conflict there and to insult Karna, Guru Drona asks Karna to reveal his ancestry. When Karna falls silent in shame, Duryodhana makes him the king of the Anga State on the spot.

(2) This incident too has some puranic reference, but I’m unable to recall at the moment.

Tr: Nasy