Jagannath rao Adukuri

We looked for her in a revived memory
In the greenness of the memorial forest.
A young mango tree flourishes for her
In the vast dome of the academy’s sky.
...

When your eyes go astray and balled
No thumping on the chest revives music
Distant listening and hair in a close mat
An electric shock here, needle piercing there
...

On the river bed three holy rivers meet
Two of them are in the minds of people
The third is a streak of undammed water
The holy men and shop people celebrate
...

A nerd bitten by the charity bug,
Spoke of slum children’s education
And shining darkness in their eyes.
In the shanties, the water flows
...

The night's wakefulness came across the starlit sky
Over the dark cluster of mangoes and the court wall
With loud cymbals and scraps of movie songs
After lanterns started flickering with halos of moths.
...

This season our backyard coconuts
Hid it under their swinging fronds
Behind our asbestos-sheeted shack,
Its presence marked by the pale shadow
...

Right now, in the room next, she seems to say something
At times as I lift my eyelids she appears in vision's periphery
As an incandescent presence in the diaphanous daylight.
At midnight I see a tiny lip movement as the train hoots
...

Now you are not the same as day things.
As though you are one among all those
Who form the viscous mass of night.
When you walk alone under the stars
...

Her white-washed house, on the town's edge,
Was warm and luminous in the evenings
Her window-shades hosted dancing phantoms.
The hibiscus tree in her backyard yielded
...

The portly gentleman looked at himself
In the bathroom mirror and smirked.
In the shrill voice of his childhood
He made some really funny noises
...

There had got to be something
Beneath all this big movement
And umpteen noises in the vessels.
We thought deep-set irony was all-present
...

River and tree look on morning town
And on the bridge and men and women
With loads of firewood from the forest
A bare-bodied man has sun on face.
...

A moustachioed gentleman in military overalls
Takes us through coin drops of silver rain on the lake
A reluctant lake overwhelmed by ruined forts
And pleasure-seeking city slickers on yellow boats.
...

The boy who tried to tease fate
Was actually not getting ahead
Anywhere, on his motor cycle,
For two seconds lead over bus
...

My figures are shadowy, squatting
On the river bank with halos intact.
They lost their identity, however
In the prevailing spatial situation.
...

My spectacles are on the corner table;
There lay fine muslins and stitched textiles
Woven with delicate patterns, their craftsmen
Lived in mud-houses and their eyes failed
...

On the mother’s knee, you got slapped
With alternate palms, warm with coal-fire.
Then the cradle went up by the mother's hand
You closed eyes to the world beyond cloth
...

It was in dreams he broke vows of silence
And flew, full of love, into the blue sky
Like a colored balloon with a hanging fate.
In his dreams words quickly became things
...

We tried hard not to dream
While awake and in sleep
We leaned against the parapet
The shadows seemed to tease;
...

Thinking is so much chemical.
The nasty smell of death
Is in boat, earth-pot and river
It is all a game, my being
...