I write in English, but occasionally in Hindi too.
Here are two of my Hindi poems with their translations by me. Comments on the poems and translations are welcome. Please bear with my Hindi handwriting.
2
THE METROPOLIS AND THE SKY
The spotless blue sky
Said to the metropolis:
Look at me
How I
Casting aside
The dark and ragged sheet of clouds
Am new again
As I was
On the day of Creation.
And you
Your excretions
Into subterranean channels
Draining
Your down-and-out
To shanties beyond your boundaries
Restraining
Pretend to be spotless
Rise above yourself
And look down below
At the innumerable black spots
At the innumerable black spots
Embossed on your body
Like fly-shit
And that envelop of fumes
Which from your each pore
You continually on yourself pour
And how drinking that slow poison
You are committing suicide
If you can take respite
From your continual wheeling motion,
Borrow from me my seer’s eye
And peep into the dark recesses –
That are the source of all this muck
But the blind and deaf metropolis
Remained dumb
-----
OUR OWN
HALF-TRUTHS
You think
You have solved
The riddle of life
By drawing a straight line between
Yes and no
Right and wrong
Good and bad
Virtue and sin
And I
Vascillating between
Yes or no
Right or wrong
Good or bad
Virtue or sin
Have lost my way
Destiny has tricked us both
Life is
Neither the geometrical proposition
Neatly proved
By you
Nor the kite-string
Irrevocably tangled
In my hands
Neither you nor I
Have the means to untangle this thread
And we’re both destined
To live out
Our own half-truths
-----
