My Country - My People: Modern Indian Epic
CANTO 1V
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Poetry is coming like a red red horse,
like a an arrow from my blood, like the life
of a martyr! It is not letting me breathe!
From across the vast glass-pane are coming
turning into words, all those trees, all
those roads that run through the trees all those
people that the roads carry, all those loads of skies
that people bear, and all those horizons that hang
from the skies; helplessly-
Every moment of mine, comes and goes,
chistling itself into a sculptured piece,
One time as my nation, another time as
my song. Yet another time as my poem, and then
as my blazing sun.
With new faces, wearing new halos of light
my poems come, jumping and dancing
on the new line of my eyes.
On my roads are written letters of
welcome; on my footsteps are rained colours
by roadside trees.
Some children are playing marble, out there.
those very marble which they play today, will
ascend the guns of tomorrow and destroy these
gigantic edifices of oppression.
They shall raise new buildings and new
sunrises will be born in the hills.
Can ranges of mountains stop the dawn?
Sun will any how jump forward, cutting
across with a thousand swords; he will plant
red flags of light on the hills-
The shining roads, which today are
bearing on their backs rolling motor cars, will flee
away through these crowds of trees..
I may go and I my not return; but there
is no escape from my memories; they shall sing
forever becoming birds in the air, they shall become
a million rays of light and spread a net on my
people.
Don't I know my child
What sea is roaring in that tiny drop of your tear,
and that is why I shout my appeals
to the trees, "you must bear weapons and not
leaves on your branches"-
* * *
rocks along my way, entreat me for voices,
voices, voices.
Chariots of experience roll over my chest:
though the flesh of my body is crushed under
the weight of their wheels, I stand staring at the
clouds of thoughtful dust left behind.
I dropped everything as a tree drops its flower.
I cannot explain how powerful is the
beauty which comes out of renunciation!
It is only when I can change my age from
youth to childhood, or from childhood to old age,
from one to another, and summon at will, the
spirit of the years of any part of the life given
tome, only then I become unconquerable, before
that, I was only a ship, sinking between
the peaks of birth and death.
My desires are temples erected on the
peaks of hills, I, a traveler, trekking my way on earth.
I am longing to vanish into the womb of
midnight silence, to pray, into the temple where
there are none, not even god disturb my solitude.
* * *
To achieve this one unique word you do not
know how much, how hard I had to dig into
my soul.
I ran with flying birds, offering marks
blood to the earth with my wounded feet.
I joined the monks of flowers and immersed
in the colours of deep penance, in the forests;
shoulder to shoulder practiced hoarse voices with
wild winds, that come rubbing their skins
to the arctic regions;
Blew off myself into the wide seas, mixed
up with unruly cyclones; made at last the lap
of hills into my temple and became a god.
then all the sounds of creation came, with
halos around their heads, crowded the blue roads
of the sky, looking at me with strange satisfaction.
But I am now immersed in pure silence.
It is so profound that no one can
comprehend my condition.
For me now, there are no sunrises, there
are not sunsets, there are no colours, there are no
melodies.
There are no experiences known to any
of the human senses.
It is this moment that squeezes me, and
offers to you,
the heavy hot drop of a rare meaning...
In the forest of rays, I was badly bruised running,
Sharp rays pierced into the flesh all over my body;
There a lone tree, in full spring dropped a huge tear.
that tree had spread its shade once, over my tired body...
flowers are bound to bloom on the limbs
of the trees one day; my country should chop the
hands of butchers, who fell trees and run a saw
into their bodies.
Birds sing thoughts of the trees, poet sings
thoughts of the birds...
All do not know, only the branch which
lost the cuckoo knows what spring is, and only
the birds which lost their songs-
Spring is not the same spring, which every body believes;
It is a season when flowers sigh heavily.
The birds can fly away, but where can the
tree go? Even when cyclones besiege it the tree
stands rooted to the earth in determination,
its life dedicated to the soil;
like me, clinging to my country, though
I do not possess one inch of land in it.
Even the wind does not know when the
leaf falls. Bees are bidding farewell, to flowers, and
the stream of my village meanders, away far, far
into distant bushes, to sleep,
come, my feet, take me there.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem