the household of tradition heaped on his back,
hollers at me,
‘You whore-son, talk like we do.
Talk, I tell you!’
Picking through the Vedas
his top-knot well-oiled with ghee,
my Brahmin teacher tells me,
‘You idiot, use the language correctly!’
Now I ask you,
Which language should I speak?
Translated from the Marathi by Priya Adarkar
Kalidasa (c. 5 CE-6 CE)
Is Poetry Always Worthy When It’s Old?
Is poetry always worthy when it’s old?
And is it worthless, then, because it’s new?
Reader, decide yourself if this is true:
Fools suspend judgement, waiting to be told.
Translated from the Sanskrit by John Brough
Ezhuthacchan (16 CE)
From Adhyatma Ramayana
Sreeramayana that runs into a hundred crores
Of books, the one Brahma composed, is not here on earth.
The savage chanting Rama’s name turned into a sage,
And Brahma observing this commanded him to write
Ramayana for the deliverance of all beings on earth.
Narada’s counsel Valmiki had and the goddess
Of the word dwelt forever on his tongue.
Dwell so on my tongue too: this I long to say
But am too shy so to pray.
Translated from the Malayalam by K. Satchidanandan
Nissim Ezekiel (1924-2004)
Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher
To force the pace and never to be still
Is not the way of those who study birds
Or women. The best poets wait for words.
The hunt is not an exercise of will
But patient love relaxing on a hill
To note the movement of a timid wing;
Until the one who knows that she is loved
No longer waits but risks surrendering—
In this the poet finds his moral proved
Who never spoke before his spirit moved.
The slow movement seems, somehow, to say much more.
To watch the rarer birds, you have to go
Along deserted lanes and where the rivers flow
In silence near the source, or by a shore
Remote and thorny like the heart’s dark floor.
And there the women slowly turn around,
Not only flesh and bone but myths of light
With darkness at the core, and sense is found
By poets lost in crooked, restless flight,
The deaf can hear, the blind recover sight.
English
Michael Madhusudan Dutt (1824-73)
Banglabhasha
Oh Bengal, in your treasury lay assorted gemstones—
But I (foolish me!) ignored all that completely.
Maddened by lust for others’ riches, I rashly ventured
To a foreign realm, there to beg and grovel.
Profligate, I wasted many a day, forfeiting real satisfaction!
Sleep deprived, my body forced to fast, Mind,
I plunged you into fruitless, worthless austere practices—
I mucked about in algae, unmindful of the lotus blossoms!
Then in a dream, your Goddess-of-the-Family, Lakshmi, spoke
‘My child, in your mother’s jewellery box are jewels aplenty,
So why today this state of beggary for you?
Go back, benighted one—return home, dearest!’
I happily obeyed her orders and in due time came upon
A mine—my mother tongue—replete with gems untold.
Translated from the Bangla by Clinton B. Seely
Agha Shahid Ali (1949-2001)
In Arabic
A language of loss? I have some business in Arabic.
Love letters: calligraphy pitiless in Arabic.
At an exhibit of miniatures, what Kashmiri hairs!
Each paisley inked into a golden tress in Arabic.
This much fuss about a language I don’t know? So one day
perfume from a dress may let you digress in Arabic.
A ‘Guide for the Perplexed’ was written—believe me—
by Cordoba’s jew—Maimonides—in Arabic.
Majnoon, by stopped caravans, rips his collars, cries ‘Laila!’
Pain translated is O! much more—not less—in Arabic.
Writes Shammas: Memory, no longer confused, now is a homeland—
his two languages a Hebrew caress in Arabic.
When Lorca died, they left the balconies open and saw:
On the sea his qasidas stitched seamless in Arabic.
In the Veiled One’s harem, an adultress hanged by eunuchs—
So the rank mirrors revealed to Borges in Arabic.
Ah, bisexual Heaven: wide-eyed houris and immortal youths!
To each desire they say Yes! O Yes! in Arabic.
For that excess of sibilance, the last Apocalypse,
so pressing those three forms of S in Arabic.
I, too, O Amichai, saw everything, just like you did—
In Death. In Hebrew. And (please let me stress) in Arabic.
They tell me to tell them what Shahid means: Listen, listen:
It means ‘The Beloved’ in Persian, ‘witness’ in Arabic.
English
Chandrasekhar Kambar (b. 1937)
The Character I Created
A character in my play
climbed down the stage,
came directly to me,
and took a chair next to me.
I was looking at the play,
he was looking at me.
His looks, like arrows,
pierced my heart.
If I shifted my legs
so that they should not touch his,
his legs wantonly brushed mine.
His hands fell heavily on my shoulder.
When the audience was silent
he burst out in laughter.
When he clapped, it was unnecessary.
All eyes were on him
and his were on me.
It was not just right.
I stood up and walked out.
He followed me.
As I opened the door
he went in before me.
Smiling a familiar smile
he stood—a mirror before me.
Why do these many characters,
educated by me in civility,
behave like this?
Translated from the Kannada by O.L. Nagabhushana Swamy
Hemant Divate (b. 1967)
The Average Temperature of a Word Required for it to be Used in a Line of Poetry
What is the
Average temperature required of a word
To be used in a line of poetry?
I performed this experiment on a poem
I inserted a thermometer in the armpits of words
And
I placed words in lines
Some time later
A stormy condition developed
As the atmosphere in the lines was adversely affected
By the difference between the temperature inside the words and outside them
I was scared
Of the possibility
That while treading the tangle created
By lines containing strong meaning
Exerting pressure on lines containing weak meaning
I might slip and fall tripping
Over the cursives
Or
A whole line whose meaning is backed by no experience may crash upon me
From a new poem about to be written
A meaningless word of low pressure
or a deletion
May hit me
Out of fear
Reluctantly I am going to stop this experiment
Of writing a poem
Now
I have
closed down this lab itself
Translated from the Marathi by Dilip Chitre
Nara (Velcheru Narayana Rao) (b. 1932)
White Paper
A great man once said to me:
write whatever you want to, but on the condition—
it should be an improvement
on the blank white page.
Blank white paper
is more important
than what I write now.
My poetry
is in the white spaces
between the words.
Like news about the men
who disappeared before dawn,
like seeds buried in the soil,
like the truth that hides
between the heavy headlines,
like a fragrant green flower,
the more I write
the more poetry there is
in the white spaces between the words
Translated from the Telugu by the poet
K. Satchidanandan (b. 1946)
Gandhi and Poetry
One day a lean poem
reached Gandhi’s ashram
to have a glimpse of the man.
Gandhi spinning away
His thread towards Ram
Took no notice of the poem
Waiting at his door
Ashamed of not being a bhajan.
The poem now cleared his throat
And Gandhi glanced at him sideways
Through those glasses that had seen hell.
‘Ever pulled a scavenger’s cart?
Ever stood the smoke of
an early morning kitchen?
Have you ever starved?’
The poem said: ‘I was born in the woods,
in a hunter’s mouth.
A fisherman brought me up
in a cottage.
Yet I know no work, I only sing.
First I sang in the courts:
then I was plump and handsome
but am on the streets now,
half-starved.’
‘That’s better,’ Gandhi said
with a sly smile, ‘But you must give up this habit
of speaking in Sanskrit at times.
Go to the fields. Listen to
the peasant’s speech.’
The poem turned into a grain
and lay waiting in the fields
for the tiller to come
and upturn the virgin soil
moist with new rain.
Translated from the Malayalam by the poet
Debarati Mitra (b. 1946)
Alphabet
Nobody introduced the alphabet to me,
nobody taught me to read;
in this cemetery by the sea
so many days went spinning by.
The evening’s flock of birds are enclosed in a blue book jacket
the unsmelled book’s pages are opened every day.
Roaming around, I learn—
Leslie Louis’s, Robert Louis’s weeping—
Paul Louis, born 1867—died 1870
‘Child, your soul is a shining white flower
may it blossom for ever in heaven’s garden.’
Thus I hear aspirates.
‘For Agatha at seventeen
my sky remained incomplete,
the wind had no flow, life was lacking,’
wrote Willy Sandhurst at twenty-three.
I learned long vowels by this method.
‘Eighty-three-year old Mariam, my mother,
to you I pour out whatever I have
of virtue, of truth, of light
on this writing table of white stone:
may your temple stand’
—the poet Augustus’s dedication.
Gradually I understand semi-vowels.
I go to the tomb—
I see the alphabet’s mouth seize the stone fruit
the alphabet’s soul blossoms
there are no pictures, no books.
Formless clouds make background shadow
birds come and perch on the endless causeway’s breast.
I pull and tear so much of the sky’s blue
the tender dawn, dyed like startled wisdom
shock nearly blind eyes.
Nobody ever taught me to read
nobody ever introduced the alphabet to me
roaming around alone
I read and write in this solitary tomb.
Translated from the Bangla by Marian Maddern
Nanne Coda (12 CE)
From On Poetry in Telugu
You can only learn about poetry
from one who knows. There’s nothing to be gained
from one who doesn’t. You need a touchstone,
not a limestone to test gold.
But when ideas come together in good Tenungu
without any slack, and description achieves a style,
and there are layers of meaning, and the syllables
are soft and alive with sweetness, and the words
sing to the ear and gently delight the mind,
and what is finest brings joy, and certain flashes
dazzle the eye while the poem glows like moonlight,
and the images are the very image of perfection,
and there is a brilliant flow of flavour,
and both magra and desi become the native idiom,
and figures truly transfigure, so that people of taste
love to listen and are enriched
by the fullness of meaning—
that is how poetry works, when crafted
by all real poets.
Good colour, build, apparent softness:
they’re all there in a poor image, but if you look inside
it’s dead. That’s what a bad poet makes.
Good colour, build, softness,
inside and out: you find them
in a living woman, and in good poems.
If you look for good lines in a real poem,
they’re everywhere, in dense profusion.
That is poetry. But if one goes on chattering
and, by chance, a few lines
come out well, like a blind man
stepping on a quail,
would you call that a poem?
Skilled words, charming movements,
ornaments, luminous feelings, elevated thoughts,
the taste of life—connoisseurs find all these
in poetry, as in women.
An arrow shot by an archer
or a poem made by a poet
should cut through your heart,
jolting the head.
If it doesn’t, it’s no arrow,
it’s no poem.
Translated from the Telugu by Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman
Bhavabhuti (725 CE)
If Learned Critics Publicly Deride
If learned critics publicly deride
My verse, well, let them. Not for them I wrought.
One day a man shall live to share my thought:
For time is endless and the world is wide.
Translated from the Sanskrit by John Brough
Meena Kandasamy (b. 1984)
Mulligatawny Dreams
anaconda. candy. cash. catamaran.
cheroot. coolie. corundum. curry.
ginger. mango. mulligatawny.
patchouli. poppadom. rice.
tatty. teak. vetiver.
i dream of an english
full of the words of my languages.
an english in small letters
an english that shall tire a white man’s tongue
an english where small children practice with smooth round
pebbles in their mouth to the spell the right zha
an english where a pregnant woman is simply
stomach-child-lady
an english where the magic of black eyes and brown bodies
replaces the glamour of eyes in dishwater blue shades and
the air
brush romance of pink white cherry blossom skins
an english where love means only the strange frenzy between
a man and his beloved, not between him and his car
an english without the privacy of its many rooms
an english with suffixes for respect
an english with more than thirty-six words to call the sea
an english that doesn’t belittle the brown and black men
and women
an english of tasting with five fingers
an english of talking love with eyes alone
and i dream of an english
where men
of that spiky, crunchy tongue
buy flower-garlands of jasmine
to take home to their coy wives
for the silent demand of a night of wordless whispered love . . .
English
Kunchan Nambiar (1700-70)
From Prologue to The Progress to the Palace
Men of culture would like to listen to Sanskrit verse;
but the vulgar can find no delight in it.
Before an audience of the common people
who are out to see some vibrant folk show,
only the lovely, shapely language of Kerala is proper.
If we present the sound and fury
of pedantic Sanskrit verse,
the common man won’t make head or tail
of such odd and obscure concoctions
and he will just get up and leave the place.
Translated from the Malayalam by G. Kumara Pillai
Chellapilla Venkata Sastri (1870-1950)
I Was Born for Poetry
I was born for poetry.
Making good poems is my business.
That’s how I’ll cross to the other shore.
All my fortune comes from poetry.
I’ve conquered death, and I’ll defeat old age.
If anyone faults my poetry, even my teacher,
even God himself, I’ll fight back
and win.
Translated from the Telugu by Velcheru Narayana Rao
Mona Zote (b. 1973)
What Poetry Means to Ernestina in Peril
What should poetry mean to a woman in the hills
as she sits one long sloping summer evening
in Patria, Aizawl, her head crammed with contrary winds,
pistolling the clever stars that seem to say:
Ignoring the problem will not make it go away.
So what if Ernestina is not a name at all,
These My Words Page 3