A St(r)ing on the Wall… Sibi, Telugu Poet, Indian
Closed room stories become public temptations
Intimate pictures on the bed
Spear young deers that have just learnt stepping out
Bodies sold for paper currency
Turn into posters to hang on ‘Wall-Cross’es
Dung spills on all womanhood
.The barbarous heritage of barber shops
Becomes such an angler
That heads turn no other way.
Along with meat plate and wine bottle
Womanliness becomes a commodity
And gets into ‘Kick’ing ads.
Animals chew these posters.
Those two rags permitted by the Censor
Look more like bandages around an injury.
The eyes that yearn to see those injuries naked
visit operation ‘theatre’s
It all reduces to an ‘A’dult affair.
Cured in saliva
Womanhood bloats to obscenity.
And every woman walks by
Looks like garbed nudity.
These are just warnings…
Forebodings of a stretching stone age.
This string of posters sting you and me
Not here and there, but everywhere.
This Wall is longer than that
‘Great Wall of China’
We should resolve
Not Whether or not to live between the walls
But to dismantle all such walls as these.
.
SIBI
(Pseudonym)
Contemporary Telugu Poet
Note: This was a translation from the original written by the poet at least 30 years back. I lost the original and I am not sure if the poet has it. I lost contact with him. He was once a very active member of Sahrudaya Sahiti, Visakhapatnam. This poem was am expression of his agony towards the kind of Telugu Cinema wallposters those days. I only wish he sees this poem
Perhaps, This is a Testing Time… Kalekuri Prasad, Telugu Poet, Indian
Just that…
I am not too ambitious to gallop away,
But at the same time, don’t want to stay put where I am
biding time, doing nothing worthwhile.
Holding a cryptic clue in my hands
I walk towards a distant dawn.
Perhaps, this is a testing time.
If I come across shackles and hurdles
of earthly life’s attractions, let them!
I may be physically weak but mentally tough.
My mind and heart are
as sharp as razor’s edge
There is a galore of abhorring scenes afore
And insufferable acts of cruelty and violence.
Once more, rising from their midst
like a wildflower
breaking through the cracks of graves
I resurrect, carrying the arms of words
that break through the water bubble like ray
to hoist the flags in colorful spectra.
By I, I mean, you, me and all of us.
(The last poem of Kalekuri Prasad)
.
Kalekuri Prasad
(1964 అక్టోబర్ 25 – 2013 మే 17)
కవి, సినీ గీత రచయిత, సాహితీ విమర్శకుడు, మార్క్సిస్టు విశ్లేషకుడు, దళిత ఉద్యమకారుడు.
Courtesy: Tangirala Sony from Facebook 4th April 2020)
Photo Courtesy: http://prajakala.org/mag/kprasad_1/#more-839
అనువాదలహరి 