NOW, WHEN DREAMS HAVEN'T ENDED YET - Translation of the fragment ಸ್ವಪ್ನಗಳು ಇನ್ನೂ ಮುಗಿದಿರದ ಗಳಿಗೆ SWAPNAGALU INNOO MUGIDIRADA GALIGE

I would like to think of this fragment as a ‘Hyderabad’ fragment from K. V. Tirumalesh’s AKSHAYA KAVYA ... lots of familiar ‘Hyderabad’ sights and sounds and images recur ... the dargah, the neem tree, the train, its sound, lights, the dargah-keeper, the basti, the street sights ... and then, of course, he takes all these somewhere else ...  

 

POET: K. V. Tirumalesh

KANNADA ORIGINAL: first line of the fragment: 

ಸ್ವಪ್ನಗಳು ಇನ್ನೂ ಮುಗಿದಿರದ ಗಳಿಗೆ

‘Now, when dreams haven’t ended yet’

from AKSHAYA KAVYA (2010)

ENGLISH TRANSLATION: S. Jayasrinivasa Rao

 

 

It is better to get up and go now,

now, when dreams haven’t ended yet

Memories will walk with me

 

Notice the names of the streets

This is the same path I walked on yesterday too

Only the leaves that fell during the night are different

 

This is the same dargah where I rested yesterday

What do those letters etched on the walls say,

now faded with fingers feeling them all these years

The white-bearded old man, god’s slave,

gets up to sweep the day’s dust

 

The neem-tree’s shadow changes 

direction twice a day

symbolising a human-being’s life 

He too had once played gambling games here,

had roamed around dissolute here

The sun hadn’t reached its peak yet then

 

I am so tired so soon today 

He will eventually have to wait 

for tomorrow’s shift 

Tomorrow exists solely for those

who have lost their yesterdays,

what remains is the heaven above

 

Hot rotis in winter cold water in summer

Wells sunk and closed

and opened again

Like doors to heaven 

Let everything be open

 

Look there on the other side

someone has opened his tools-box

A foot with a torn toe-strap is 

proffered before long 

I sit there nearby

 

The chisel, the thick needle, the pincers, 

the hand and fingers sliding over leather,

focussed mind,

I am as amazed now 

as I was the first time

and as I will be every time

He too is my friend

 

Then the tar-laying people 

saunter in chatting in the evening

They are who I encountered 

early in the morning

Their faces are now black, 

hands are black

Legs swathed in rags

Each leg looks elephant-sized

This one is Uttanapaada

That one is Kalmashapaada

What happened to the other?

 

There is no place they haven’t stepped on

They have brought mud caked 

on their feet from all paths

See how they have spread to the nooks,

hiding in the cracks of the basti,

 

The sound of the local train running 

on open rails can be heard already

dhad dhad dhad

 

On either side the earth shakes as during a tornado

Cactus blooms suffer miscarriages

Window lights zoom past like serial lights 

They pass over a pair of clandestine lovers

like a dark and light strip

 

Somebody says

I don’t have anything to offer

except love

I have heard this many times

 

*****

WHEN YOU HAVE NOTHING, MEASURE SHADOWS - Translation of the fragment ಇನ್ನೇನೂ ಇರದಾಗ ಛಾಯೆಗಳ ಅಳೆ INNENU IRADAGA CHHAYEGALA ALE from AKSHAYA KAVYA

Here is another fragment from K. V. Tirumalesh’s AKSHAYA KAVYA ... I am constantly amazed by Prof. Tirumalesh’s gift at transforming fragments from philosophy into such rivetting poems ... this fragment is one such ... it takes from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave ...  

 

POET: K. V. Tirumalesh

KANNADA ORIGINAL: first line of the fragment: 

ಇನ್ನೇನೂ ಇರದಾಗ ಛಾಯೆಗಳ ಅಳೆ

‘WHEN YOU HAVE NOTHING, MEASURE SHADOWS’ 

from AKSHAYA KAVYA (2010)

ENGLISH TRANSLATION: S. Jayasrinivasa Rao

 

 

When you have nothing, measure shadows, 

said the Athenian 

They are manifestations of truth

That’s why shadow-plays are important, he said 

At an arm-reaching height

if there is a window, it’s enough

if it has bars, let them be

There is but one home for light 

 

But for the wind, it’s different

It doesn’t have roots or branches

It could waft over 

tender leaves or rivers and lakes

or possibly even along just a canal

and arrive  

like people returning from a fair

carrying the burden of a different fragrance

or just empty-handed

But the mind is never empty

At the least, it is filled with 

astonishing and amazing colours

 

Light has been bestowed 

with this profound quality

It teaches the prisoner to part the clouds 

by streaming the shadows 

After that he can imagine

night and day sun and moon

a thousand eras and beyond

But reality lies in the space 

between each bar of the window

 

Amidst Gita sermons, 

Holy Quran recitations, 

and Bible readings

Did anyone ask him what he wants

 

When you bang your head against the wall

You head cracks not the wall

Nothing is a metaphor here

Real blood real stain

 

I think what he wants is 

A photo of his wife and his children

 

All these were not there in Plato’s time

 

*****

THOSE WHO SEE THE BUDDHA BECOME THE BUDDHA - Translation of a Hyderabad fragment 'Buddhana no:didavaru Buddharaagutta:re' ಬುದ್ಧನ ನೋಡಿದವರು ಬುದ್ಧರಾಗುತ್ತಾರೆ from AKSHAYA KAVYA

This is a ‘fragment’ on the Buddha monolith in the middle of the Hussain Sagar lake in Hyderabad ... this poem appears in the Buddha sequence of poems in  K. V. Tirumalesh’s AKSHAYA KAVYA ...    

 

POET: K. V. Tirumalesh

KANNADA ORIGINAL: first line of the fragment: 

ಬುದ್ಧನ ನೋಡಿದವರು ಬುದ್ಧರಾಗುತ್ತಾರೆ

'Those who see the buddha become the buddha' 

from AKSHAYA KAVYA (2010)

ENGLISH TRANSLATION: S. Jayasrinivasa Rao

 

Those who see the buddha become the buddha,

said the sculptor at Shilparamam once

 

From that day on

at dawn, at dusk

while going to work

while coming back from work

from the car, from the bus

from the banks of Hussain Sagar

from the steps of Birla Mandir

 

Standing sometimes, sometimes walking

and some more times just wandering

sometimes secretly, sometimes openly 

amidst people

 

We can’t fall sleep 

if we don’t see the buddha

 

Ayyo buddha, we say  

make me a buddha, we say

lying face downwards

 

You put a shirt on him and 

make him stand at the door?

You make a doll of him and 

seat him inside a glass case?

Is that what you do?

 

O’ my dear sculptor,

take out your chisel and hammer 

hammer our heads

chisel away our unnecessities 

tear open our guts

 

The compassion in your eyes

that pristine smile on your lips

that majesty in your bearing and

the folds of your garment like

a million ripples of the quiet lake

 

You have to become a stone first

says Rodin and ready to be 

a road-roller too

il faut toujours travailler

(it is still necessary to work)

 

The base material is basically the same 

 

*****