Canto VI

You called me; but I would have any how come in search

of you even without your call, in quest of your voices-

Looking with my ears, with my eyes, with my skin,

with my nostrils.

Not one, but with all my senses, 

searching in all directions of my country-

I came, not that I only know and you

don't know; but that we all shall walk in the 

same direction hand in hand.

Not that we should all speak the same word

but that our word, shall not be a mere word

but a flame of light which will illumine

the paths of the people. 

And that we shall realize it is within us

it is for this I am in search of you- 

My friends my words and thoughts are countries

never tread by the feet of any man, my consciousness is a gypsy

who knows no boundaries familiar 

to the antiquated history of mankind.

My footsteps are mighty wild lions that

sprawl in the dense forest unaware of fear-

I fight with flowers, I fight with gardens of flowers,

I fight with clouds, fight with fierce storms.

Fight I breath to live, my limbs know no submissive postures.

I am the solder of righteous indignation.

Truth is the volcano that explodes in my bosom.

truth is the fierce cataract that roars in my voice. 

I burn my selfish body and flow like a river molten gold

in the highways of my nation.

Come with me..

Why fear? Be not afraid of yourself,

But be afraid for your country, for, 

understand how great are the losses of your country

before your petty, personal ones.

How can you eat and sleep amidst 

this colossal destruction?

You know my brothers,

I want new voices brimming with red red hot consciousness.

To make my own weapons and armoury,

to wipe out the tears of my nation.

You don't know perhaps but I know

there are mines of sulfur in your voices;

Every poem that you make is gun to fight,

and every line that you carry is a canon

to blow up the enemy

I bequeath my voice to my people; my

language breaths the oxygen of my nation

my country is the life of my art....

I am the prophet of blood!

In my country the leadership i mine,

I shall not let it go to politics-

Come, take up your arms, your poems,

come like armies, like storms, snatching your

thunderbolts which for an occasion you hid in the clouds-

* * * *

I am the tempestuous wind.

I have come to distribute to you unrest,

I am shouting to chase away oppression from the earth.

come my people to chase away oppression from the earth.

to follow me, you must ruthlessly set aside the self

that clings to you, and become free.

Your voice should banish your own song and give

birth to the song of the people, just as the voice

of the sky hurls out its thunder.

You should join your wars with the wars of your country-

How much love after all does your small life require?

The earth will be inherited by the oppressed; come let us excavate

our dawn, buried deep in this land.

Come my people take up your ploughs.

come with your women, your children.

Come out of your hearths and homes,

from prisons of your schools and offices,

your academies and assemblies.

Come let us see centuries blown off in the winds of time.

Come, walk with me through the villages towns and cities.

Flow like floods, roar like floods through all the

streets and highways of our nation.

Look at the graves in our fields, in our

forests, in our hills, in our walls and halls where

they buried our dawn!

Come take up your ploughs brothers.

throw off your books my children, let us suck the life-breath

out of those swines who buried our dawn,

and made us slaves in our own country.

Let us search, in the earth for the footsteps

of those millions who embraced suffering while building

edifices of happiness in the fields of mankind. 

come let us plough and tear the earth.

let us pick the millions of dumb voices that stumble

across our plough.

Let us unfurl this red desire and walk ahead.

Let us discover in the journey that 

man has no death and life never dies;

Come friends, there is a distance to go,

come breaking your selfish walls.

Let us bathe in the epic waves of the people,

Let us e washed off to the shores of the new world,

come let us go-

* * * *

Do you know that there is hunger?

Do you know that there is thirst and that the two

are the most cruel animals that live on the flesh of

your precious freedom?

I have come to you, as the voice of the whole nation,

To tell you that if you want to escape from their clutches

and also your generation along with you

then reject the dolls and picture books that

your father gets you. Ask him to get you fields and factories.

And tell him, they are the toys which you like.

If your father cannot get them for you,

let all the fathers of the country unite.

My children, when you go to the colleges 

do you know the fields look at you with tearful eyes.

They ask, "why always this futile procession of books

in the roads of this country? what good after all

did they do to this land?"

you go into walls of the colleges, from there

into the walls from which nobody ever returned.

Then, when did you live I want to know!

Then generation of your father did the same

leaving that very question as their legacy to you, their sons...

When you walk past holding your slates and books,

to my eyes, you look like child-christs each carrying his cross. 

Rise, my child, rise from your childhood.

Cast away your books, take up your plough, break the old chains

and run to the voice of the fields.

Bid goodbye to the old roads.

Listen to me, I bestow on you the great gift

of my ferocious fire, which like a miser, I,

carefully saved in my heart. Burn this rubbish

of the old and create a new world of your own. 

Roar like the hoary winds, and announce that

you have not come to merely eat and breathe

and then lay down your breath and simply leave;

That you are those giant fires that left the forest lands,

that you are the mighty seas which broke their bund.

This moment in history climbs my peaks and calls!

My journey turns into a drop of sweat

and stands upon my brow now!

I bequeath to you this truth with the signature of my blood.

Freedom is the first breath of man;

That is the living language of your blood and

it shall be your sole desire to retain it until 

you lift your last foot-step from this earth.

Fields alone are your schools; rivers, clouds, sunrises

and sunsets are your teachers; wholeheartedly surrender 

to their language. Accept the discipline they impose. 

Fields grant you the gift of freedom,

They present you the happiness of breathing in complete

relaxation. they give you an enormous plateau like chest,

legs of hard iron; a pair of eyes that spit fire of self respect

and a head held erect like a mountain top.

come! lay yourself at the feet of your new teachers.

Walk with courage, the country is yours-

* * * * 

why should you have a heart if you cannot fill it with pains?

Why should you have those eyes if you cannot wet them with tears?

I cry each day a thousand times;

I realize my liberation when I merge with you.

You are my sea

I run

Only to flow into you from the clouds,

from the hills, from the forest from all directions of my country.

But look! I am the great flood rushing forward don't come

in my way. Don't try mean tricks on me,

To turn me into petty channels of utility,

Look at force of my wild fretting waters;

Your eyes will go into raptures.

Listen to the wrath in the roar of my voice;

Your ears will enjoy feasts of ecstasy.

Read the epic of my journey.....

Come, I shall roast your hearts on the flames of my language;

I shall show you your destination.

Like a brute I shall hew the society of Man, 

as a tree is cleft by a thunderbolt.

I shall burn all my papers, I shall burst all my hills,

I shall paint the whole house of my body with pure blood.

and light all my windows with the lamps of wild voices;

I shall squeeze from my every nerve and donate all my light.

I shall bleed to the last drop and my whole energy 

shall bear every fruit of the earth-

And then

I shall bask in the warmth of fulfillment that

I could give one flash of awakenment to my people.

* * * *

Do you know how the grain is coming?

Do you know who are tilling the land?

Do you know who makes the plough into

the life giving weapon of the tiller?

Do you know what power the earth possesses?

Know my friend, the creative powers of the earth.

In the flames, the iron is red hot, in the mid noon 

the heart is wilting heavy blows of the hammer are falling 

on the solid iron which is burning like the rising sun;

The steel armed heroes are blowing storms, burning old worlds

and recasting new ones in the smithy labour. 

Those toiling multitudes of bygone days vanished into 

the earth without a voice-

Call, my heroes, that voice back to life today.

Thunder, my heroes, that their bread should

be returned to them.

Resurrect the flaming humanity buried in

the dust of their bodies.

Furnaces are blazing in the eyes of oxen;

fury is raging on the forehead of the plough.

O sun, burn, burn yet more until all our

dark nights are vanquished forever- 

* * * *

I am the tiller of this land, my head is full of fancy

that the grain of the land acquires legs,

and those legs acquire dreams of walking to

the homes of the hungry.

I till the land all day,

And then I sit at a distance;

Scanning with my eyes the immensity of 

the land which I tilled,

Feeding the air with sighs, and watching the evening

which looks like a bended old laborer,

carrying sacks of gold upon his back.

I am mixed up with the earth. I grow 

like the trees and the crops in the earth:

and live like fruit and grain in my country.

The whole day my hands are full of work

but by dawn my hands are empty, seeking work-

Like my companion the sun who works

the whole day to fill the sky with light, and again

the next day the sky is emptied to be refilled.

I coax the earth tenderly, and nurture the young crops,

feeding them affectionately, with soft and tasty,

soil made like butter with all the skills of my cultivated hands. 

My body is the earth; both burn and thirst for water

in the seasons of summer when the sun is furious.

When the fat rain drop shining with flesh and blood

slips into the dry earth of my mind

a whole crowd of scented dreams wake up-

I am born out of a broken dream.

I bathe in the colours leaking from a broken rainbow.

My birds swim in the air, build houses in the branches,

and lay roads in the sky.

In the country of my dreams, I have only a hut.

I don't know why I must live in a zero!

All are going for harvesting the crops

pearls of desire are rumbling in my heart to join

the procession but my sickle is broken!

And there is no one to mend it in my beloved land-

* * * *

I am walking, walking past dark rows of huts, not lucky enough

To posses even the flicker of a wick.

My legs were chopped off, but I kept walking, treading the distance.

My hands were chopped off, but I kept on walking, sculpturing my dreams.

My tongue was chopped off but went on walking holding just silence.

I was flowing like flood into the sea.

I was blowing like mad wind into the sky

There was not even a candle of light in the cruel

And tearing darkness, to give me a handful of rays

I am walking in the rows of huts where

There are no men by day and there is no light at night.

I am walking-

Here, a child is leading a young calf to feed, having no food himself.

Where even childhood has to work to survive;

There my legs really got chopped off

My hands really dropped off

And my tongue fell dead

There, I am not the flood

There I am not the mad wind at

The feet of that child.

I poured all my tears at those feet. The necklace of pearls

That was swinging in my soul, snapped and fell

Fell at those feet, my poem turned aside her face and wept.

The poem said:

“I cannot come even if you invite me into

a heavenly dream from here

Where I am rooted forever”-

* * * *

When somebody shouted: "Dawn has come" all the people

of the village came out to see.

All the children ran into the streets; doors of houses,

doors of windows, doors of taverns, and doors of workshops-

All the doors of the village opened with great eagerness.

But what they saw, instead of the sun was the eclipse!

they cheated not merely men, women and children of

the country; but the fields, the forest and the rivers as well.

There is no hope now; life here like a rotten fruit has decomposed.

A graft of this poisonous tree cannot bear useful fruit, even if planted

elsewhere and to uproot it is our only duty.

You cannot sense the wounds of water, the wounds of trees,

the wounds of the crops.

But you perhaps don't know that the trees, the crops and waters

are the souls of great martyrs, unrecorded in the pages of history.

Those who plough the whole terrain and give the flesh of

their bodies to the earth, who fondle her and listen to her

heart beats, with their blood and sweat render it soft as cheese

and butter, who dream for days and nights watching the tender crops

like their own children, feeling their 

every subtle scent, every little curve 

as they grow,

And when the grain appears, the fruit of their dreams,

the children of their own sweat and blood, 

they exit with empty hands-

ploughers, those great heroes in the epic of man. 

those millions of nameless martyrs, live inside the earth,

reluctant to depart, cuddled affectionately to the ancient aroma of earth.

When the seed is laid and the rain drop descends, 

They enter the womb of seeds, become fruit and grain,

and then enter into the people

to become seeds of the next generation.

Therefore, the trees in the country shed tears, and crops

cry when they see their children dragged to schools-

It is not as if they cannot loudly protest, but they are too kind

to avoid the consequence of that event, which even the countries,

continents and oceans of the earth cannot withstand.

Should only a tree climb up the top of the hills,

raise its voice and give a call, all the trees of the earth

will run, from all directions, in crowds and large multitudes.

There would be a huge rally of forest, fretting for action,

they will resolve, that they shall not lend any form of service in the houses

offices and universities of those who snatched away the children of the country

and transformed then into slaves;

As a sign of protest, the doors, the windows, the beams, benches, tables

chairs-all the wood that went into these structures will turn into trees again,

and walk away to the forests.

Waters will return to the rivers, and air into the sky;

Then the factories of slavery will collapse, 

The process of manufacture abandoned; leaders

of the trade shall flee for life.

And all the children, of the country will be 

released from their prisons.

Then clouds will again rain, rivers will begin to flow,

forests will stretch their gigantic hands towards the sky in great jubilation;

and millions of children, will jump and dance in all the fields, like flowers

and the country will begin to breath once again.

* * * *

When I see the face on which smile is write large,

my hand involuntarily reaches for a grenade-

'How could they acquire a smile like that?'

"whom did they bribe to buy that sleek smile?"

Stirred up in the forest within me, rush

a thousand hungry wolves with flaming questions in their eyes.

Pity, that honest and the innocent cannot afford

a smile like that in our country!

My hatred wells up when I see beautiful things!

How irrelevant is beauty in my context!

joy is another form of beauty; that is why both are my enemies!



What have I to do with beauty or joy,

when your officers spat on my father's face, which my eyes

saw as a boy, and could not shed fire, 

shed only helpless tears; and now shed red blood.

What have I to do with beauty when your officers called me incompetent?

Me? Who has power of nothing short of a volcano- 

they interfere with human dignity and the birthright of self-respect-

Bastards- they make our precious lives their play-things.

Seeing my temperature, civil language fled away long ago

in terror from my lips.

Now it is not even abuse-from head to foot; 

my whole body is blowing dreadful hurricanes of blood and fire.

My hand rises to smash to smithereens that

huge building with one stroke of my fist.

* * * *

When I see those faces, the hopes of my whole world

of flowers are burnt to ashes.

When can I rescue myself from the tyranny of your faces?

When does it crumble into rubble and rubbish

that octopus institution of yours which

you so grandly constructed on a happy understanding of each other.

You, you barbarous tribes! you preside over beauties,

you who are born with the one mission of destroying it.

All the trees burning with fury observe hartal of flames

year after year in the wrong name of spring,

anointing over their bodies flames of flowers,

and on their faces perch rows of birds,

as symbols of their signature of protest.

What do you find there if you look at me like this?

Alive I am mortal,

dead I am immortal!

* * * *

Men meditated and meditated and created a reptile.

They tended and brought up the reptile,

feeding it liberally on the grain of votes; and hoped

they could live happily ever after in the cool shade

of its hood-

Now, the reptile lays eggs of laws regularly;

and it often eats its own eggs,

it multiplies its race...

It enjoys and nods its hood at the arts of the snake charmer

and hisses and uses its fangs when he drops charms even unwittingly-

soon, spread the tribe of snake charmers in the country

with the ever expanding scope of their profession-

In the end hardly any space is left for the common people in this country;

This now is the history of my land.

My friend, don't you get tears when you look at 

your country and your fields?

Doesn't hate erupt in your system against those criminals

who plunging daggers into the chest of your harvest?

Take census of those martyrs whose lives were taken away

in the name of democracy and not of those mean men,

who are enjoying their lives in despicable servility.

O my people!

Your who are burnt to ashes by the curse of the snakes... come 

I give you a new poem;

This poem gives you a new life:

This poem gives a new journey;

Stop practicing the art of snake-charmers,

get inducted into the noble discipline of killing the snake-

In this country to the bending men are born,

men who bend low and also salute.

rising of this ominous sign in this land heralds

great disasters to our population,

kill the bending man and the land is rid of the reptiles at once;

sniff his smell in the air and kill him in his mother's womb,

for he has no right to breath my country's air and no right 

to drink my country's water.

I shall not have him pollute my country's atmosphere with

the stink of his breath; remember,

he is our real enemy.

I shall let loose on him all the rapacious cannibals

enchained in my boson and I shall banish

sleep from my eyes until he is destroyed. 

* * * *

Explo9ited and banished by the day, the sun

walked away by the western fields, barely with 

the last rags on his body.

I laid aside my plough and was somehow milching

my humble song from the remnants of evening;

A half moon rose without my knowing;

suddenly like a head chopped, dropped and

disappeared dripping rays of luminosity-

How much I pulled up myself. Not a yawn rose in me

to receive the night-

Skipped one or two pages of the sermon of the grape,

and surrendered my limbs to the bed without an argument-

In a hideous nightmare I saw the children of my country

being led away, turned into ant and dropped into oceans of ink

by headless human shapes, dressed in pants and bush-shirts-

Rudely jerked I screamed and jumped out of my dream.

The flame in the window looked at the gushing wind

and shuddered; titanic darkness swept across 

and swallowed my house;

I laid m gigantic legs on the roads outside,

when footsteps of men were dying away and the 

great constellations in the sky were setting into drunkenness of sleep;

I went eagerly in search of the East, to gather the first rays of the sun;

Dawn seemed to have stopped at the outskirts of my village

I could not stand the moment any longer.

With bloodshot eyes I blew the storm which 

I holding in my fist on the world.

Next minute, over the hut of the east

tapering into the sky, sun rose like a crowing red cock-

My tired body, smitten by joy of a morning ray, fainted and fell- 

* * * *

The morning sun came to my door and peeped in,

the day appears to be in haste. It came running

wearing the sunrise in the west and sunset in the east-

There is some tremulousness in the eyes and 

the footsteps are faltering-

The eyes seem like frightened birds, legs are

like brooks stumbling over rocks;

unexpectedly Chaitra(spring) arrived; I am not 

equal to welcome the celebrated guest.

With exhaustion, after ploughing a long day,

I rested the plough and myself beneath a tree

letting my thoughts fly high as kites.

A bird resting under a small shade of a leaf was following

the movement of a gypsy cloud in the skies,

eager to know where it would melt in the depths

of the blue and with the desire to go

there and melt away itself with the cloud.

The mischievous tree threw a shower of old leaves on me.

* * * * 

It is thick amaavasya; yet cities of constellations 

opened their eyes in the skies beyond;

Vast forests of thoughts caught fire in my mind. 

Sleep like a bird fled away in fright leaving 

her nest to fiery vacuum. 

Away from the bars of my window, in the far far 

regions of space, in the density of massive forest lands,

armies of trees arrayed; 

war of tempests blowing; 

Winds mad with rage run amuck in all directions;

Rivers jump down the heads of mountain ranges, 

flow down their battered bodies in floods of red blood. 

cities towns, villages of men tremble in ignorant indecision. 

Bodies run on blind legs holding in their hands 

their freshly cut heads, blood dropping in the streets 

and their grotesque open teethy mouths shouting

curses at the disastrous civilizations.

Earth explodes her own body and flings off her limbs

into the tumult of furious oceans 

with a million articulate hands...

In my window, the noise of two raindrops quarrelling!



CANTO V11

You living corpses! Look! Falcons are hovering over your cities

That silent trees do not speak is an idea of your ignorance but they are monks 

living on their inner energy. in the civilization of mix of huts and mansions 

you commit suicides and flatter them as self-realization. 

your speeches are charred chastity of languages

Trees rising out of the burning bosom of earth give soulful cool shade. 

In woods ruled by winds man can penance without out lose of revere. 

On the highway of your cities we find bullock carts 

dragging like unbearable ancient burden. 

Motorcars flash by like vanity on wheels, 

do not even glance at the rows of trees on the roadside. 

Old and new slight one another in your path. 

Values of nature have been cast away by your view.

That eagle flying wing to wing with the plane in the high skies is not a mere bird 

It is an ancient bird gazing from the ramparts of the azure at the rise and fall of civilizations. 

Those civilizations Which Man unfurls as symbols and flags of his victory in pages of his history.

Looking at man’s trumpeting vainglory mountains are in snide splits

Oceans are smiling in doubt; sky is roaring in laughter,

ancient forests, wombs of wisdom are in pain making inaudible commentaries 

Oh Man! Where are your feet taking you? 

Those feet bending under the burden of your shallow civilizations. 

Listen! Sitting on the boundaries of centuries storms are screaming -

CANTO V111

This song left me years ago and again today

has set its foot on the doorstep of my lips.

This valley is knitting our songs, moon has arrived

into the window and has rekindled fires.

Plough has become a cobra in my hands,

In the fields, my work has become chains to my legs.

Your speech, a cluster of bees that carry

honey, never leave me-

My heart becomes a river only to flow to you.

My mind becomes a room only to open its doors to you.

Here is the flower which I carried for you from the fields,

It is a bird, which craves to build its nest in your hair-

* * * * 

Songs that we together hummed last night

have not left clinging to the shrubs as yet.

And those flowers that descended to the earth

forgot to return back to the trees.

Moonlight that rained last night in the coconut groves

is dribbling from the long palm leaves.

I have collected all those drops with my eyes.

I love you as the sun loves the earth.

Though at nights I go, I return by morning,

to see you and forget myself.

If there is no tree or house, I shall give you

the shade of life with my hand.

The rainbow had curved its body over the fields.

Raising our sickles, come let us go- 

 

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