From ice-breaking
machines to man-cutting machines
Against this
quivering inhuman glitter
From the
middle of burning villages,
Passes my
poetry.
Along with
rapid fires and pointed screams
My poetry is
the first to reach the burnt woman.
And in the
process, my poetry gets charred at so many places.
And even today
they use poetry as a morgue van,
Filling the
oxygen of new idioms into the lungs of words,
But the one
who is born under a curfew,
Whose breath
is hot like ‘loo’,
That young
miner remembers my poetry
Like a
completely new rifle.
Into the
prohibited realms of poetry
I suddenly
entered with crores of men,
To all those
poets
My entry was
like a vulgar ruckus,
Who for
their own convenience
Want to
steal the coming Sunday, in the waters of opium.
Now my poetry
calls, like a life being taken away,
Without language
and rhythm, only in meaning –
With that
pregnant woman
Who was shot
in the abdomen, lest
One more
honest man was born.
Swallowing rotten
rats,
In whose
gullets, time has stuck,
In whose
eyes the stains of dead remembrance have dried and stiffened,
They have
gone to the jungle for good –
Away from
people
Because words,
originating
From the
thinnest vein of their thighs
Terminate in
the fattest vein of their thighs.
They are
hiding their intentions, by the freshness of language,
Just for the
sake of a discussion,
They also
mention the names of places like Srikakulam,
In a strange
way they have been successful in this country.
By the names
of dead persons,
They are
calling the living,
They are
professional killers
Who throttle
the neck of naked news
Behind the
scandalous headlines of the newspapers,
They are,
always, pets,
Of that one
face
The map of
his urinal
Is bigger
than the map of my village.
The publishing
institutions of this country
Are like the
white worms found in snowy creeks:
On the
shores of Hooghly, before committing suicide,
Why had that
young poet screamed – ‘Times of India’.
--- it was
not possible for us to go near his corpse,
Even the
rented man also could not weep for him,
Because,
before everything else
Today, with
his real strength, he should be an attacker.
Every time,
while writing poetry
I come to stand
before an explosive grief
That for how
long I should carry
This indecent
map of the world,
That for how
long, a wholesome man should sleep
Within the
lakhs of villages caught in the chains of tanks?
In the Calcutta
Zoo, a rhinoceros told me
That right
now, there is no freedom anywhere,
Everywhere there
is security.
In the most
protected region of the capital,
Is nourished
a primitive wound
Which produces,
with the help of wild cats, a bestial alienation,
From then on
I have decided
That the
difficult hide of a rhinoceros, should be used,
Not for war,
but for an immense pity.
I am reading
letters inscribed in flesh –
Equipped with
poisonous gases and menacing detectives,
A small fry
of this system
Forcibly enters
my house anytime
And with
electric whips
Uncovers
My mother’s
thighs
My sister’s
back
And my
daughter’s breasts.
In front of
my gaping eyes, he destroys
My vote and
even my power of procreation.
Tying a rope
round my waste,
He starts
dragging me,
And the
whole village stands,
Witnessing this
cruel scene
Because, up till
now poems have been written
Only about
going to jail,
Poems, which
can blast the jail
Are not yet
born.
One night
When I was
in search of fresh and warm words –
Children born
last Sunday were sleeping peacefully in thousand beds,
Children who
were just a little bigger
Than the
length of the pen with which I write poetry.
I suddenly
saw them standing in the corner,
They were
standing in the corner
Like loaded
guns, like sirens, like a white leopard
Like a
syllabus, like stench and the constitution.
They were
guardians,
Beyond my
reach – cruel parasites.
For them I was
totally defenceless,
Because words
do not harm them
As long as
they have the 7 cm bullets
Ready in the
rifles.
They will
pick these children from the beds
And take
them straight to the dynamite house
They will
spare no effort
To prevent
me from getting acquainted with these children,
Because my
acquaintance will enter their dynamite house like fire,
Like the sound
of deep waters.
I descended
outside
In the breeze,
on the road
Where suddenly,
a fire engine driver confronted me,
“After all,
what will be the future of letters like this?
After all, for
how long will we be remembered,
Through racing
fire engines?”
Over there,
young grave-diggers struck work, pledging,
That from
now on, we will not just burn the corpses
Of the
people who died an untimely death,
We will go
to their homes too.
Often, while
writing poetry, my knees
Are struck
by the boat of an unknown sailor
And once
again the search for a new country begins –
It’s not at
all important, that the name of that country be Vietnam
The name of
that country can be the name of my father
Who was
swept away in the floods,
It can be
the name of my village,
It can also
take the name of those godowns,
Where, up
till now,
I have been
auctioning my crops and my lines.
Why had my
old neighbour asked one question –
“I am a
landless peasant,
Can I touch
poetry?”
Where the
blood of young breasts and mighty shoulders burns,
In the mines
of mica,
Not even
once in their lifetime,
They remember
mica as ‘mica’.
Because every
time, the question of poetry
Lags behind
the question of common life.
In history,
even from primitive ages,
The places
which are kept vacant in the name of poetry,
Only tins of
fat have been accumulating there today.
Inside deep
blue glass
Sukant’s 21
feet long suffering intestine
Has been
kept
Not to bring
forth a backbone of eternal rebellion
But to make
stranger still
The strange
museum of poetry.
In the midst
of fine cut tobacco-like poems
Which gather
crowds of old unsuccessful lady loves,
My shepherd
face, full of the odour of sheep,
Must have
struck you all as entirely unexpected,
Just like
the floating corpse of Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh
In place of
fishes, in the aquarium of Sahu Jain.
Why is that
face, of being surrounded in a bomb-explosion,
Only in my
poems?
Why can’t I write
that poetry
Which is
like the sleep of children,
Like a mine,
Like the
colour of ripe blackberries.
Why can’t I write
that poetry
Which is
like the scent of dry grass in my mother’s naked body
Like the
odour of deer’s sweat in the forest of bamboos,
Like the
ears of rabbit,
Like the
mating of blue seagulls
In the wild
solitude of summers
Like the
resting salty brown in the caves of the ocean.
Why can’t I write
that poetry which is
Like the
back of a thousand feet waterfall,
The poetry,
which is written on the walls
In heavy
letters, like the footprints of an elephant,
Which is
inscribed on so many lakhs of ploughs,
The poetry,
which lies like stale weak bread
In the tiffin
of so many lakhs of workers.
Their poetry
has been fighting dead bears.
It’s only
he, who can break the skull of those gamblers
Who have
turned poetry into a horse-race,
He, whom you
call common man,
Because he
is bigger than any country’s flag
And he has
started realising this.
He has
started understanding
The novels
written on him,
The highways
and canals dug by his own hands.
This is the
great possibility of poetry
That the
common man has started seeing his own creations …
The metropolis
supported by his legs,
The capitals
resting on his back,
He has
started knowing them;
Gradually his
face is turning into a new axe,
He has
started realising
The real
relations of seed, soil and water
And claws
like the shining steel of the plough.
While expanding
the meaning of poetry
He unchains
the words like detective dogs,
In a
splitting moment he sees
The loneliness
of the chains,
He knows
already –
Why the
Adivasi child stares at the alphabets
Even while
he is afraid of the writing,
He is
exposing the secrets
Of the most
abominable book of history.
____________________________________
Translated by : Roma Prakash
(in the 1990s)
