Wanted Father

Father!

Let me pride on you thinking about you for once.

When I strain to figure you out

Your hands dragging my mother

Catching her by hair come to mind.

And the stamp of your foot on my neck

Still stands like a tattoo.

My childy little hands

That pleaded you unknowingly

Still grip those childhood nightmares.

Father!

I just long to like you before I die.

When you flash in my memory

Even the dozy eyelids at midnight

Open with fright shedding deep slumber

Recalling your ebriated babble and bluster.

Your troubled life seeking after justice

Shivers me in my shoes.

My cheeks numbed with your slaps

Fail to convey the sense of tears rolling to the heart.

I yearn to wail heartily for you

You thought you could whip with your words for ever.

The leather you suppressed the siblings with

Would never give in.

But, the same hands and legs

Badly seek a support now and

Your soul craves for a touch of love and affection.

All of a sudden you expect

Your children discharge their filial piety,

And the wife to forget all her heart-aches

And condescend to serve.

Father!

I want to love you instinctively before I die.

True!

You pampered my brother

Buying him new kids wear.

And once in a while, say, for BHOGI

You bathed us three children.

True!

By icing your love with five-star chocolates

You converted my sis to your way.

But

You haven’t learnt

What a father be like.

He must give life to his children,

Be a splendid ornament to my mother,

And a paradigm of reassurance.

Father!

I want to talk proud of you before you die.

Father!

I want to reclaim you before I die.

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Translated by N.S.Murthy

The Night when Train deceived It

Night secretly crawls over the rails.

When serenity suddenly rams into the crowds

Thousands of tombs come up in a tick.

The link to the dream- about-to-begin snaps.

And the voice that reverberated through the compartment

Assumes a sudden silence.

The hand that was turning a page or a paper till then

Recedes leaving no trace of itself.

And the night in no time becomes all a pell-mell.

Hardships and tears,

Fantasies and festivities,

Despairs and despicables, and et al

The train strongly hugs to its steely heart.

For some, the life’s script ends abruptly,

The corporal frames assume cadaverous looks,

And as for the severed limbs separated from source,

Bodies can never collect,

Nor can the train bring back to life, once done with.

Hapless signals stare helplessly,

Scraps of rails wail their heart out mutely,

The night continues to crawl restlessly

And as pitilessly.

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Translated by N.S.Murthy

Swish of a Sword

To speak about poetry is as difficult

As to wake up one feigning sleep.

How densely the poets condense their spirit in time!

Whenever you recollect them

They overwhelm their subjects like tides.

“Chalam’s “Savitri” came to life, perhaps,

Not out of his pen but of his voice.

Even poetry becomes poetry

Only when it swells out of its source

Unable to stay silent any longer.

For a poet to dream about poetry every hour

Is like conferring a ‘Laureate’ on him.

How wholly it churns the heart, poetry!

To pass the grace of words

Over the dancing eyelids

In tune with the corrugated movements of the brow

Jumping over the barrage of heart

‘Tributary’ing sonorously into the ears…

To swish the sword of poetry endlessly

From the dense cumulus clouds of heart

To the dried up terrains of men…

To feel poetry as easily as one speaks ..

And to recreate it as happily time and again…

Well! Can a poet’s heart ever turn to a desert?

Will his pen ever stop even if his clock stops?

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Translated by N.S.Murthy