New Marathi Translations Series

The Moon and the Mule On a ploughed field of wasteland All animals feed on darkness thinking it is pasture I am an earthen clod dissolving in the night Clouding my surroundings. But then my vision is Cleansed by the sight of a bright Moon and a mule mesmerised By its own shadow The tear scripted by moonlight weeping into the water Become a line and a rippling fish Swimming in the surroundings muddled by The melting clod that I am… The time being such. And thinking that the moonlight is grass The mule continues to graze upon its own shadow I become the soil that settles at the bottom of the night The very hook of space catches the slithering Wave that the fish’s become Thinking it was the Moon itself I saw The grazing moonlight of the mesmerized mule. (From kavitenantarchya Kavita)

The Zebra Jungle-shadows and a shimmering afternoon Turned into a grazing zebra in a pasture’s dream Our presence seeped into the shrubbery From drunken eyes Through streams of burning sunlight. By the willows at the edge of The green swamp The African solitude contained in my body Kissed you with the pleasing lips of a stinging wind Painting leaf after leaf in the living colours of silence Jungle-shadows and a shimmering afternoon In a pasture’s dream A zebra grazing upon losing grass Through the bright yellow tussocks of dreaming bodies The sky leant into you from me

_________________________________________________________T The Story of Karma Those who walked street after street my friends got smashed on reality’s illicit booze Got scattered long since on their uncharted paths The air smelt of petrol and of burnt smoke-scent Though I wasn’t equal to the task it fell on me to bear the yoke I was nobody’s hero the role of a saviour was not in my bones Whatever was I looking for wherever I did I go Looking for myself and seldom finding me Except by some random hazardous accident Got bonded wrought my experience the hard way Reached my goal straight and fell down stunned by it all I came to be snared on my own in life’s total trap What difficult people to deal with what atrocities they inflicted On one another how could one cope with their angry demands of exacting love Yet now one realizes that they seasoned this language alone

Make-believe From ivory make an elephant; from the feather of a crow:

You just have to close the eyes--and lo! All the chains break loose. But what is this din One hears in the distance? Made by helpless people? You just have to open your eyes One poem is over and another begins You should’ve been there forever. In the opening and shutting of eyelids I traversed the planet; lived its history: Made love; experienced perversity. Spent the Vaikhari ---my common tongue generously among people As I reached Pashyanti ----the tongue that images, and can see Para The tongue that illuminates the self from a distance. ___________________________________________________

They Tell Me Your Colour Is Blue They tell me your colour is blue

My life-breath feeds on your inspiring luminous pastures All that stands still or moves has turned into grass In celebration of your much extolled blueness It is also said that you are unfathomable Those who know your exact whereabouts say so on oath I am happier to realize you in your lost but similar addresses In your nature that spurns all limits All awareness turns over In a winking of your eyes Your serpentine power looms throughout your being It shows us our destined parts in your vast anatomy You---from the number one to its zillionth decimal---are A unique curvature unto yourself That has no outer shell nor has any inner space. _________________________________________________ What I am Expressing Is Itself Love What I am expressing is itself love. That had no other choice but to be expressed May I once again tell you the exact sutra The self is the dancer The inner self the stage The senses the audience We’ll just go on blinking our eyes And as we blink we’ll forget What we’re at is making love As though touch Has opened the whole sky of awareness And it is like starlight gazing at stars and calculating stars ______________________________________________________