*********
memories to follow behind me, with myself as the leader
of the procession and my burning
red desire, flying as my flag-
* * *
Moments are not the retinue of time. There is one which
decides the turning point of mankind. I can’t hand over to sighs
that time which stands and beckons me. To hell with the shades
to recline and chew the gum of past.
Remember, the storms do not count for a life which strides
With hills and shifts oceans; the fiercest storms blow off while
Struggles of life flit around like flies.
Look! Drunk on pearls of sweat, the sun grows large
and formidable with millions sickles and hammers of light.
In history where savage winds blow in cantos, I cannot be
Like the braches of trees that remain trembling in the hands
Of unrelenting winds.
Do not query why so restless, ask the ocean why it is restless.
Do not say why so furious; ask the hurricane for the answer. Better
Know that time after all is my paper, upon which I write the
Charter of my dreams for the world, sculpture a colossus of force
Out of man; my will, will shout and throw a new era on the earth-
It shall confer unrest on man and
Flow like red-hot blood through all the roads of
Our villages and make him into a sea and into a tempestuous storm.
I shall gift that consciousness to my country with my four dimensional poems….
Now, centuries will speak the language, which I learnt in the wombs of forests;
My word will be the legacy to future generations;
my poems, only countries and nations deserve-
* * *
Last year's spring flowed away like a river;
into which orchards it meandered and slept, I do
not know-
But the spring returned, searching for the
mango tree in the backyard of my house!..
Everything in the world is fleeting, yet keeps
returning, searching for the beautiful. Behind the
leaves in the branches I see footsteps of birds,
marks of the moments which flew away last year.
in my tired journey, my tavern is the shade of
a tree, and the guest is the fallen flower.
This is spring, the year's first dream, in which
I trudge my way on the body of my country
like the dream that preludes the dawn, covering
my nakedness forest, tying the rivers as my turbans,
carrying my road on my shoulders.
I walk, coaxing the fields that are crying;
I walk, yearning to sculpture my country's hills
that have waited for forms, into lions, into elephants and camels..
into workers, toilers, tillers, lovers and into epics that are like their crowns.
the sun is coming with loads of morning
rays stacked on bullock carts! The tree that saw
me first and shed tears, now rained flowers on my dream.
CANTO 11
The lilies open their lips only to speak of
you, the leaves whisper in my ears, your craving
for me.
I spend nights without sleep, staring at the
starry skies, with my heart torn, between you and
my people.
My eyes carry you and my nation, as two
candles in search of my island of hopes; where
my people wander on the sandy beaches in gay
abandon, tear the flesh of fruits with their teeth
and prowl like beautiful wild animals.
where I the storm, fled away from the
oceans take shelter in the coconut groves of your
bosom
Where, my nation, surges like a wave of the
sea which does not carry the load of ships, where
the morning ray does not stab and kill the
population of dreams of my people, where I spread
myself, as enormous green pasture for my country's
children to play and romp.
Let us go there-
Where the roads of my country ramble into flowers
in the month of chaitra, and carry like trains
my people the travelers to great festival.
Let us not sit idle,
let us go and join our great people, with
our sickles, in the festival of harvesting.
* * * *
Once before the jaws of monstrous cities
Swallowed me
I used to relax my limbs on the golden sands of seaside beaches.
And stretch my gaze beyond the restless
Waves of the blue sea.
I used to bathe in the vague sweetness of fancying the objects and lands,
beyond the limits of my visual experience…
is it Rangoon, or Singapore, or Bangkok,
or that large chunk of water, that liquid sapphire, the Pacific,
which is my blue dream flying
In the sky, fallen to the ground, having lost its wings, somewhere suddenly.
Seas are punctuations in the sentence of earth
The running civilizations breath rest a while
When commas, colons, and hyphens interfere in their travels.
They are then introduced to the lands of new shores,
with fresh looks and In fresh garments.
Seas are pots of ink, which the earth uses
To write her romances.
Empires, civilizations, scents of knowledge
Are scribblings, which the winds carry from the seas.
Those ancient winds, light the cities, rule the countries.
And , it is the same ink with which the epics
Of man are written. Time swallows the poems
Written by man, for the health of man.
I ate old poems now, and vomited their
Undigested limbs. Now
My hunger is for the new word.
I knit poems now with the void
Thundering beyond my eyes,
With the blue whispering beyond my seas
With the heights soaring beyond my stars:
With depths in me which my hand
Cannot reach,
With al the material which my
Contemporaries are not familiar with-
Beyond the cities in which I remain
Undigested:
Beyond the forests where my soul hatches
Her yearnings,
Beyond that circular line which binds all
Created things and only the one arc of which is
Visible to human eyes,
And beyond which my third eye, craves to burst:
There waiting for me
My blue, blue sea, lying in wait
For centuries on end..
* * * *
CANTO 111
What a relief
lungs of my soul feel
to leave Hyderabad behind
and float away into the air!
Thoughts begin to breathe again
after many months....
"How could this being live so long in the
poisonous air of that dreadful city?"
so saying, the trees of Nilgiris gently drew
me into their lap.
I wake up like a flower in the mornings of
hyderabad and walking in its roads I turn into a
rumbling volcano, ready to erupt .
I walk
holding up my pants, treading the post-
independence civilization and poetry that the day
of hyderabad vomits on the roads, like a chronic patient!
one should write poetry only in these roads.
Looking at government-marked faces, every next minute, all cannons in me burst.
Exhausted I look at the trees pitiably and say
" I do not want poetry"-
I want a bomb crammed with a thousand earthquakes!
How many such volcanoes, like me, are not walking in these very roads?
Seeing and breathing the carbon dioxide of this obnoxious civilization,
why these trees blossom flowers, why don't they bear bullets,
I shout at them;
This city, is my cup of poison, thrust into my hands by fate,
commanding me to drink!
All my passions and intoxications are in it;
It is here, that I lost my worlds and gained them; it was here
that my life alternated between gain and loss endlessly
in the cold-blooded race of life.
It is in these roads, that I ran like a howling storm,
and fell like a boat, that lost its sails-
I am going
carrying my memories
In search of a balm for these wounds.
life here spares nobody, ignites fire from man to man,
O bird! do not sing your song here,
fly away, in search of your own green hills.
* * *
In the city of man, in spite of hundreds of
people buzzing about, time, has the upper hand.
It is only the voice of time, that is heard, as
the single domineering voice, superceding all the
millions of voices of man.
It displays the portentous fingers of its
impeccable hands in all the clocks of the city. It
throttles the voice of man, ruthlessly with those
inexorable hands.
It descends on the chest of man, like an
iron eagle of gigantic shape.
But here in the hills, there are not days or dates;
there is not another single soul either;
time, which chased me to this place
collapsed, unable to follow me through the leafy,
and melodious labyrinths of these hills;
strange trees, stranger birds, smiling and defiant hills,
and the immense solitude that sleeps in the hearts of hills....
all collude and weave a spider's web of silence here, in which
the Time is caught like a tiny fly and meets its death.
The feelings of this place are like flowers
unsmelt by anybody before. The tree-tops here can
be reached with eyes only and not with hands;
Over the heads of those trees which are brushing
on the canvas of sky, a large white cloud rolls
by with big strides.
Breeze, lazily knits a delicate net out of
the breath of flowers, all around, in the blue space.
In the powers of unknown happiness, man
changes into melody, and flows in the bodies of
birds and hills; Man leaks away from the
gripping fingers of time's hand.
Even the little insect which flits around on
its wings in pure innocence and freedom, enjoys
the happiness gifted to it wholeheartedly by
creation, to the same degree as man can.
The insect is no less than Man, in the
borders of this land, where the hills rule.
Here the power of Man's ego, vanity and will
are abolished without a trace-
The unpolluted condition of pure life, alone
has the right. That is why I dragged Time into the hills and killed it.
* * *
When I was in the seed, I heard a note.
Desire stirred in me to sprout and see the sun and sky.
To drink the nectar of wonder in silence I became the tree.
I became the dream of the tree in its branches which is to say,
I blended within me, the melody, the essence and the scent;
and became the flower.
Because it is only as a dream, that I can
comprehend the secrets hiding in me.
In the dream was revealed to me, that
earth, water and air are different forms of the same matter,
and that I, combine within me the ultimate content,
the quintessence of the three. Soon after
this realization, I became three-
Wore colourful wings. Became a butterfly
and ran after myself.
Dipped myself in the leaves and came out
as parrot and ate myself, the fruit,,
I became a fish, forgetting my shorelessness,
swam across waters for unknown shores...
I am a tree, all this is the journey of my life.
Autumn anoints yellow on my leaves,
wind removes my garments, mist sprinkles holy dew
over my nakedness; and I the tree like a king
after coronation confers imperial gifts of
cool shades to the scorched earth.
Day is flying its thoughts in the blue sky
turning them into pieces of white clouds.
Hazy breeze is breathing life into my limbs. And the fruit
hanging in the branches looks in wonder at the tree,
which is for ever flowing, dropping leaves and bearing new ones,
and again shedding them like a stream of life endlessly.
The fruit wonders about the secret of this tree!
It bathes in showers of leaves that come down
at the slightest touch of the wind, feeling the bliss and beauty
of the falling leaves....
May be , fruit is the seer, who went into depths of meditation,
to learn the inscrutable secret of life.
It sees life in death, otherwise how could
death be so beautiful, is its enigmatic question!
Even a thousand seasons of spring, cannot achieve the grandeur and
beauty of a single nude tree, which has renounced
all its leaves and flowers...
Oh, I am bathing in beauty,
I swoon in the storms of subtle and deep pains
which beauty inflicts on me.
O what a tree this this standing grandeur
where is its secret?-so thinks the fruit hanging to the tree.
It realises before it drops from the branch that
the seed of the tree is inside itself and that
the I of the fruit is no other than the I of the tree...
* * * *
The earth is a natural museum into which generations of flora and fauna set;
And our children, the wingless birds set, like rays of evening sun-
And sons of new generations rise from new
Wombs and new seeds, with new faces, surrounded
By new orbs of light only to weave new civilizations, for the pages of history,
Which keep bulging, until the axe of time descends on it mercilessly.
Sweat flows as an eternal under-current of history, the sinews of human machine work, to
Make this glittering superstructure remain,
constantly creaking like gigantic wooden wheel, never at rest and never fed with grease-
History, the stupid woman, works up her hoary voice in tremulous tones, to narrate the
Epic tales of man from graying reason, men listen to her in all times-
The museum is filled and emptied; crowds pass in, and pass out through the halls, like moving winds restless for an unbounded journey, for peaks unseen, unknown but dreamt of generation after generation by the eyes of trees, animals, Men and molecules: while the drums of armies, governments, judicatures, dictators and demagogues continue sounding their empty fanfares-
O each age hungers for a passion, each age invites the rule of stupid theory, willingly; subjects itself to its sovereignty, while the intellect remains critical, watching and hatching the eggs of a new age-
* * * *
CANTO 1V
Poetry is coming like a red red horse,
like a an arrow from my blood, like the life
of a martyr! It is not letting me breathe!
From across the vast glass-pane are coming
turning into words, all those trees, all
those roads that run through the trees all those
people that the roads carry, all those loads of skies
that people bear, and all those horizons that hang
from the skies; helplessly-
Every moment of mine, comes and goes,
chistling itself into a sculptured piece,
One time as my nation, another time as
my song. Yet another time as my poem, and then
as my blazing sun.
With new faces, wearing new halos of light
my poems come, jumping and dancing
on the new line of my eyes.
On my roads are written letters of
welcome; on my footsteps are rained colours
by roadside trees.
Some children are playing marble, out there.
those very marble which they play today, will
ascend the guns of tomorrow and destroy these
gigantic edifices of oppression.
They shall raise new buildings and new
sunrises will be born in the hills.
Can ranges of mountains stop the dawn?
Sun will any how jump forward, cutting
across with a thousand swords; he will plant
red flags of light on the hills-
The shining roads, which today are
bearing on their backs rolling motor cars, will flee
away through these crowds of trees..
I may go and I my not return; but there
is no escape from my memories; they shall sing
forever becoming birds in the air, they shall become
a million rays of light and spread a net on my
people.
Don't I know my child
What sea is roaring in that tiny drop of your tear,
and that is why I shout my appeals
to the trees, "you must bear weapons and not
leaves on your branches"-
* * *
rocks along my way, entreat me for voices,
voices, voices.
Chariots of experience roll over my chest:
though the flesh of my body is crushed under
the weight of their wheels, I stand staring at the
clouds of thoughtful dust left behind.
I dropped everything as a tree drops its flower.
I cannot explain how powerful is the
beauty which comes out of renunciation!
It is only when I can change my age from
youth to childhood, or from childhood to old age,
from one to another, and summon at will, the
spirit of the years of any part of the life given
tome, only then I become unconquerable, before
that, I was only a ship, sinking between
the peaks of birth and death.
My desires are temples erected on the
peaks of hills, I, a traveler, trekking my way on earth.
I am longing to vanish into the womb of
midnight silence, to pray, into the temple where
there are none, not even god disturb my solitude.
* * *
To achieve this one unique word you do not
know how much, how hard I had to dig into
my soul.
I ran with flying birds, offering marks
blood to the earth with my wounded feet.
I joined the monks of flowers and immersed
in the colours of deep penance, in the forests;
shoulder to shoulder practiced hoarse voices with
wild winds, that come rubbing their skins
to the arctic regions;
Blew off myself into the wide seas, mixed
up with unruly cyclones; made at last the lap
of hills into my temple and became a god.
then all the sounds of creation came, with
halos around their heads, crowded the blue roads
of the sky, looking at me with strange satisfaction.
But I am now immersed in pure silence.
It is so profound that no one can
comprehend my condition.
For me now, there are no sunrises, there
are not sunsets, there are no colours, there are no
melodies.
There are no experiences known to any
of the human senses.
It is this moment that squeezes me, and
offers to you,
the heavy hot drop of a rare meaning...
In the forest of rays, I was badly bruised running,
Sharp rays pierced into the flesh all over my body;
There a lone tree, in full spring dropped a huge tear.
that tree had spread its shade once, over my tired body...
flowers are bound to bloom on the limbs
of the trees one day; my country should chop the
hands of butchers, who fell trees and run a saw
into their bodies.
Birds sing thoughts of the trees, poet sings
thoughts of the birds...
All do not know, only the branch which
lost the cuckoo knows what spring is, and only
the birds which lost their songs-
Spring is not the same spring, which every body believes;
It is a season when flowers sigh heavily.
The birds can fly away, but where can the
tree go? Even when cyclones besiege it the tree
stands rooted to the earth in determination,
its life dedicated to the soil;
like me, clinging to my country, though
I do not possess one inch of land in it.
Even the wind does not know when the
leaf falls. Bees are bidding farewell, to flowers, and
the stream of my village meanders, away far, far
into distant bushes, to sleep,
come, my feet, take me there.
CANTO V
O melody, hear me..
by what good luck I do not know,
a moment of vision came to me like a comet in the sky,
vision of cruel facts of life.
Now, don't cheat me by your charms and
infatuations. Don't make me forget my pains.
If I were to forget, all those that have to
be exploded with these very hands, they will
remain sage and secure, with a longer lease of life.
O flowers and voices, let me snatch my weapons.
Let me wake up those minds which are
sleeping snugly in that unbearable stink.
Let them be turned into violent winds.
Let me teach them the art of hatred. Let
me preach them how sacred is hatred. Let me
bestow on them with all the power of my blood,
the sacred gift of awakenment to hate.
Whether left in the air, or bound on paper,
let these words plant volcanoes in them,
let my volcanoes burst, don't stop this sacred explosion.
* * * *
The green parrots which I try to catch here
with silken threads of thoughts, escape, into
families of trees wounded by the hands of
merciless storms.
Life here, aborts, discharges dreams, with
undeveloped limbs and ugly shapes; these, some
vulture carries by the beak to the hill-tops, eats
and vomits them, upon the people, calling them
poems-
The child within the womb, better remain
in the womb in this land of ours; if it comes out
and complains of hunger, he will be shown
the foot paths and not the fields where the food grows-
Here even the sun falls out of the womb of every night,
a shapeless lump of flesh.
My days limp like colonies o lepers, my
dreams of future hiss and strike their fangs
into the flesh of my present nights.
Days of my country are boats that dash
against rocks and break, nights are worries that touch
the heart and burst into flames
Oh! Today I am ferocious dragon, made
with the hands of the repulsive puss oozing from
the body of my land.
* * *
The red fox, in the trees of my mind, keeps
on stirring, in and out of the thickets making
constant reconnoiters at something. eyes burning
like coals in the darkness for its unseen goal. it
punctuates my thoughts, interjects commas, colons,
interpolates hyphens, never introduces a full stop.
It brings more ideas from the sideways and
savannahs and swells up the procession of my
thoughts, arms them up with passionate emotions
and waits to see the procession burst out into plains
like an unshackled sea, wild and uproarious. the red fox
which feeds my mind withy flames, moves
like a fluttering red rag, with sinewy legs against
the storms that blow over as enemies of countries,
continents and nations.
Who created this red fox? Is it the two coals
that flickered in the thickets of a head, a
beard and whiskers? but
I am sure it is not Doulton of England!
* * * *
Some bird from somewhere comes on
wings, drops a song in my ears and flies away.
A line which conveys a real experience,
comes to you like a bird with life and a song....
Yes a life and song!
* * * *
Yes, this is the land where millions of stones live,
forlorn by their families of hills.
this is the land crushed under the
iron heels of grueling sun.
This is the land which spits flames
of mirages from her bloody wounds-
this is the dancing hall of the reckless flames of the sun's furry.
this is the land which is deserted by all
living beings, leaving it to the enormous void,
spreading from one end to the other end of the sky.
Here, nothing exists except a bird
and a tree.
The tree is perhaps the one who lost his way
from those families of trees, which migrated
to distant lands, in search of water.
Like tear of the tree, is the lonely tiller
with his plough; alone wrests the life-substance
from out of this niggardly rocky soil.
O! The arrogant sun rubs its muscles on
the cheeks of the tree. From what countries
do they come, these exiled whirlwinds, to take refuge here?
who said they are rocks? they are consciences who
gagged their mouths with their hands.
Who said they are flames of the sun?
They are armies of fire, invading on helpless rocks.
To history with me, these rocks also gave their
blood. Today they are mere rocks, but the
the sculptures of bygone empires were their dreams.
O toiler, over there with a plough in your
hand, you are not alone. Your journey cannot halt
merely as a drop of tear. There is another brother
who joins his footsteps with every one that you
tread on these stones, in other part of the earth remember-
In Iraq, in Japan, in Mexico, in the Far East or Mongolia-
Over these rough lands, flowing with tears of rocks,
A man will arise one day over whose body
iron muscles move as whirlwinds.
See, the ranges of mountains, how silently
they move in the distances, draping their shoulders
with 'Uparnas'(upper cloth on shoulders) of sun; they are prophets,
delivering commentaries on the depths of skies in
exalted tones, which you cannot comprehend!
* * * *
I am now alone and gathering silences in voidity,
I am carrying the distance upon my shoulders dragging my feet
along the road, my hands dropped by the weight of inaction.
Veil my eyes, my ears!
In our land where flowers bloom, drops of blood are falling.
In our land where birds sing, the air is laden with sighs.
the days are tied to the trees and hanged.
the rising sun is removed and flung away
savagely into the rocks of the west;
each dawn is vomiting blood and my people
sit with folded hands!.....
Why don't the mountains scream in rage,
why don't the skulls of nights break into pieces,
why don't these millions of stars crush themselves
to death and fall?
In my own country my voice has become
fugitive; the voice I raise here shoot into sky
and stuck up somewhere, never returns,
people why don't you listen to me?
Oh, they don't know to wake up?
They don't know how to open their mouth and yawn,
They don't know how to stretch their swarthy hands
and thunder their legs on the earth...
They are our own people, let us
give them our strength...
Let us give the entire content of our
existence to them.
who make our country, who make our history,
who fulfill our dreams and aspirations-