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issue no. |
169 |
July-September 2007 |
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These poems first appeared in Live Update: An Anthology of Recent Marathi Poetry, edited and translated by Sachin Ketkar. The first poem appeared in an issue of Shabdavedh, December 2002 (p.21-22), and the other two poems were published in Bhujang Meshram’s first collection of poems titled “Ulgulaan”. |
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The Rainbow in Black Holes |
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The much wanted
Innocent snake-mating dance
Of rain and sunshine;
A grand banquet
Of mercurial colours
On a podium
Coquettishly dancing
In a concert altogether
You cannot tell one
From the other
Like the five elements I am made of
Will you hear my question?
Who is a rebel,
Who is the All?
The All is powerful in nature’s heavens.
Vibgyor: O Eklavya1 hold on tight to
your kite twine
Lest you be blown away
Like a colour-blind
in the absence of light
The ruddy reddish vessels
Of blood
With a rhythm
Of image from one end
Such is white,
Pale like a pallid corpse
Yellow is gaudy liver-
Like a yellow bouquet
Of yellow flowers
If there are strict commands
Of the father from the sky
However, green is verdant
Like the mother
Neck less deep blue
Blue-necked blue
Whom the universe
Has invitingly borrowed
Violet bluish-purple jowar
O god! My god! Grey, like a master-
What has happened to black?
Has he been Eklavyaized?
Or was it not possible to glorify him?
Why? Why?
How can he
Be given a place in seven colours?
Can you call him
a colour at all?
Let not the untouchability
Of the world of colours
Touch him please
Paint your face
Black like him
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On white Mondays!
The erotic mating dance
Of the sun and rain
The rainbow
Unfolds its loyalty
The helpless horizon stands
On the backstage
In the sky upright
Is the bow
Mind
As if in the brahmakamandal
The uniform colour
Of joint family
United or self rapt?
The crack
in the temple wall self -priest
Shines a little
What about the colours?
Are they birds?
They fly like butterflies
They spit on the mirror
Of government grants
After all only beggars
Can become angels!
The one
Who has given up all claims
About claims
And has taken
the entire lonely Milky Way in his arms
He alone can be our Ghalib
One who is addicted to acceptance
Surely, the strongman scholar,
Surely, the strongman scholar,
now these
All colours in junkyard,
smoothened
Or unorganized utterly
Fate is inconceivable
in planning
v i r o l e d
b g r e u
t y e l l o w
o r a n
Time possesses a black rainbow
In the wanderings
Of all the black holes,
Are the weapons
Of the mind’s rainbows
Pull the string,
taut the bow hard
So that it goes across the Milky Way |
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Hilly Wilderness |
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The lights burn
At night -muted
With a silencer
One can’t make out
How the sovereignty of sleep
Overwhelms you
And comes
Like a cockerel's clock.
Maybe it is the only one,
Like the distorted mirror
Of a village barber.
It shatters
All the worldly plans
Of tomorrow
If one looks
In the daytime,
And all the luminosity
Of the trickling perspiration
Reflected in it,
The many dignified wingless water
passages
Fog of winter
Outstretched from the field
To the earthen stove,
Over the wilderness.
Of course,
The darkness gives it
Company |
The sentry moving
The row sings the warmth
Like a blazing bonfire
The yearlong dew
Of perspiration on the earth
Of the dark body
What kind of grandeur is this
Of the mountain?
The insomniac mind
Always dozes
Like a procession
Spreading out in the sky.
The sky spreads...
As the night gets taut
Like rubber
The day,
Impish
Like an eraser.
In the meantime,
We,
Shrunken
Like the boiling water,
Extinguish
The leftover
Beneath our feet.
The hilly wilderness
On our head continues
To smoulder. |
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The Performer |
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Right from my childhood,
I see this face
Without a body
Searching
For his limbs,
His heart and navel...
He even looks for these things
In a spare parts-shop in the market
Just in case,
He identifies a mark,
Which would suffice
As an umbilical cord
From where
Do these tornadoes of anguish come?
Which are the seas
One has to delve into
To find a residueless race?
These faces of legends
Capriciously change
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Like the taste in one’s mouth...whose
Bazaars and cities
Crop up around
These very anthills
Then he arrives
From the east,
The prayers begin
Bodiless bodies
Sit imagining
His existence
He becomes faith,
A power,
Luminescence
And the poetic image
How is it
That none of us
Can become his body,
His grief? |
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Notes:
1. Eklavya--in the Mahabharata, the legendary tribal archer who learned archery from the royal teacher Drona from a distance, and was asked to offer his right thumb as payment so that he wouldn’t compete with Drona’s favourite disciple, Arjun. He has become the conventional symbol of a victim of caste discrimination in Dalit literature.
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