Hindi Poetry

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.

                                                                        1

                                                                 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

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

            -----