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Prologue: The beginning

When I put forward a proposal to poets expressing themselves, surprisingly, the first two who offered their poems asking me to choose what I liked to translate, happened to be from the U.S. They are young ladies who studied in Andhra but working as I.T professionals there.

Poetry in any language is an expression of feeling, emotion, understanding, of pain, grief, joy,devotion, or imaginative ebullience. The composition can be construed in more than one ways and rendered differently.
Manas Chamarti’s poem below can be looked as an utterance about a lover, or even God.

Manasa Chamarti

Tender Relief

When
you suddenly
Quiver becoming a lightning
When I, becoming a thought singed all over
How much commotion!
After raining like drops
In you too,
Melting like poesy
In me
Oh! Sky!
When I felt light
How much serenity!


The Pendulum

1.
I kept a door ajar
Of course, you did tell me while going
If you had come!?

2
Made yours, there it is, the room
With smiles and magnetic glances
In your silence
The room like a lamp lit is here
Without and trembling not shaking
Here, just like this

3
Like ship going cleaving the sea
Blowing the foam of smiles
Your memory, cuts softly, pains somewhere

4
Of course, you’d come, very soon,
Walking over the rough path strewn with jamoons
You are one perturbed to put forward you foot forward
Thinking of me, didn’t you come imagining me not there

 5.
Time when the seasons change
Would flowers blossom or no
Birds flying away, would open (or no) their voices
Wiping away all colours
The sedate sky
When slept in your close embrace
Like with world emptied behind my eyes

6.
In a thousand scribbled sheets rolled into a blob
With the feeling never would they reach
Like you
In me.

Manasa Chamarti studied in Siddhardha Engineering College, Vijayawada; IT professional now in Houston, Texas (US). Running a blog madhumanasam http://www.madhumanasam.in  since 2010.

A love letter may not always the one addressed to the beloved, a person. Here is one the poet wrote about the unfathomable Almighty.  The second poem too about the known and the unknown.

Shaik Abdul Rauf

A Love Letter to Kakinada

Kakinada!!! Kakinada!!!
You are a symbol of my first youth
You are a swinging rope bridge
Between my ambitions and failures
The lady love who expressed
Your attraction and attention
When a smile dropped from my lips
When tears spread on my eyes, you wept
Expressed empathy
Walked with me becoming my companion
Kaki nada! … O Kakinada!
In the hubbub at the Masjid Centre
Becoming the flow of life’s
In Lachchiraju streets
Becoming an oasis in Ismail’s poetry
A coloured glass kaleidoscope of the Medical College
A festive festoon of the swaying rainbow
A noisy laugh of the heart
A perturbed ocean in me
Extended like waves into my thoughts and feelings
You, becoming the love nets like Ho’s Island
The palanquin of my hopes
A reflected image in my responses and tribulations in me!
Kakinada!   Kakinada!
I loved you, go on loving, always, and for ever!

(Dr.S.A. Raouf, a practising Diabetologist in Guntur, writes only when he cannot help writing.  Antarnetram Mukhachitram, 1983, kanureppala-kitikee rekkaa madhya 2005 and nadee kalam – athade (Based on Ismail’s themes) Jan 2018 are his poetry collections.

Indrani Palaparthy

MaNikarNika

On the aged pieces of wood for cremation
From out of the clusters of the rising flames
Smoke spreading like a white snake
Towards the Ganges
The lifeless hand
Swaying in the water
Carrying oily stain
The hawk of Aghora
With clotted hair
Folded fingers
Closed eyes
The mendicant cocoon
Holding sounds on the beak
Flying over the boats
Flapping wings
The wind crows
Carrying the wet feet
Hitting the dumb crow
Touching the hit dumb steps
Becoming heavy drinking the wetness
The sun is the pilgrim
Crows changing forms reach the clouds
Falcons throwing their claws on the Ganges
Cocoons becoming butterflies
In the pilgrim’s cup of hands
On the banks of Ganga …
There … that is MaNikarNika!!!

Here is poem about a ghat on the shore of the shore of Ganges, the river Ganga. The legend goes that Lord Shiva’s consort gave herself to fire when her husband was insulted by her father Daksha, a Prajapati) while performing a yajna, a holy oblation. The burnt parts of the body of Devi Parvati, eighteen in number, were dropped in parts of the country. The poem is about the place where her nose stead was dropped. The poet herself explains this in a note at the end of the poem.

Indrani Palaparthy, an I.T professional, a student of Siddhartha Engineering College, Vijayawada and later M S Industrial Managing Engineering in Wayne State, Detroit (US) published four collections of poetry and a short story collection before 2016.

Balasudhakar Mouli

Now

Even
If I wanted to pluck a flower
Grief engulfs me

A little girl of eight
The hand that crushed
I am afraid
If my hand is among those

For the first time I am ashamed

These, my hands
Writing a few sentences on a paper
All day
To be enamoured of those
Now grief shocks me without let up
What if there are no hands now

Dropped on the earth
White drops of snow
Fair, tender little girl
With eyes like little balls
Became a pool of blood

Me, all these days thought the little is my portrait
And made a mistake
I tell you, standing erect again
To be wounded again
I am not prepared.

From the river Champaavati

Everyday
I have been going passing over …
For some reason, today
I don’t feel like crossing over the river,
Feeling deeply grief-stricken
Sorrow, heartbroken bleeding heavily
All blood carrying nerves broken
All over, the body the blood oozing
The river looked a dead body
Full of blood all over
Water flowing like blood
Champaavati is weeping heart broken
With eyes like ones denied sleep
Whichever song she sang in whichever village
A stale of blood
The tale of rivers becoming corpses
Why blood in the rivers that must carry water
Why tears
Champaavati is flowing, washing away villages whole
Before ending the tale of a hamlet washed away
The stage is set for another new tragedy!
The grief of Champaavati
Is getting submerged in a deep hole

Where is water in the river
Where is water for cultivation, for crops?
Where are the people who migrated from the hamlets!
The body is has become a morsel 
Filled with tears
Grief is eddying in the
I am passing over the
Listening to tales of grieving helmets
I have been walking …

An incident happening just can shake the mind so violently that it bothers all over again and again. This poet’s work, “Now” describes the trauma powerfully. So, does this Srikakulam district’s fierce river’s frequent and unanticipated flood. Population living in the area hold their hearts in their fists as the Telugu people say it.

Balasudhakar Mouli (b.1987) is born in Poram, Mentada Mandal. He is a pot graduate in, M.A and M.Sc teaching Biology in a school teacher in Gummalaksmipuram, a distant place from Parvatipuram.  His poetry reveals the pathos of people near the never dependable and dangerous river. Edagaalsina samayam (2014) Aakulu  kadalani chota  (2016) are his two collections of poetry.    He bright out a collection of school children Swapna saadhakulu also.

Protecting the Heart’s Nest

Getting destroyed the love and affections I have and
Ideals being thrown out, action getting broken
Flows a feeling of anguish
Making tears flow and go on flowing miserably
The eyes squeezed dry and steam smoke
Spreading endless
Though the hearts are broken and deserts are expanding
The hope on life singing in the heart
Enthusing in the light of the alphabets
Anointing the wounds
Every minute protecting and stopping the hearts getting ruined -
Perhaps it’s all the to protect the heart’s nest.


Before the Breathing Stops

Whether Man turns a ‘psycho’ because of some stupid sentiments
Or, after becoming a ‘psycho’ grows such feelings
The condition now is not understood
Everywhere feelings and beliefs immoral and illogical
Fasting spreading ignorance and neo-culture
Man turning destructive of Nature, spreading causes for tears
Spoiling natural environs and burying natural kindness
The strings of Nature’ music and bases of good living
Behind the burning fire oblations
Deafening noise of cruel, stupid and destructive ways
Drying springs of life-sustaining water, depleting oxygen
Where these unnatural things flowery are strewn away
Mother Earth and Sky are senselessly harmed.
Here no longer the Spring maiden runs away,
Seasons miss their ways
Thirsty rivers and forests get dried up or singed.
Human mind is getting devilish with ideas destructive
Between promises unkept or rejected or unaccomplished
Without brutality and wisdom let us protect environment
Let us grit our loins making and acting on God-loving action.

Poets describe the human condition I various ways, mainly devastating contemporary reality. Deep thinking and courageous action only protect and save human existence.

KondreddyVenkateswara Reddy, is a retired officer of the state government who won awards for his poetry. Of the fifteen awards he won, to name a few, Addepalli  Ramamohan Rao Award, Patthabhi Kala Peetham Award, Vishnubhotla Foundation Award are mentioned here.

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