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Poetry is a creation, an activity making you either rush gasping with emotion or making you fumble for mere words that your idea does not allow to use one in an impulse or passion: you go on, making changes, cutting off, erasing or discarding the paper, crunching it into a ball and throwing the ball in the dustbin. It is an impulsive rushing expansion or a very slow and irritating progress. There may be lover coming in with no foreknowledge or a peculiar kind of L O V E. Judge this poem yourself.

Poesy

As picking up fags lifting words
To weave a net like a bird
Anxiously running, the bird of a poet

Threads of dry tree branches
Garlands of pearls
You make
Go on searching for a nest, a lone, little sparrow
The Sun’s orb, with no retirement
In your empty brain
With acts of childhood
You would be whirling like a spinning top
With a smile between your lips
A loving call in the two stars of your eyes
A black road moving forward like a python
A butterfly of very common sight
Unable to enjoy
Your shirt’s sweat perfume
Flies away whirling above.

Mrs .Vekataramana, wife of the poet who called himself Sumanasree, is imaginative like hubby.   She has a book of poetry entitled in Telugu SooryuNNi andukovaalani ,’‘Trying to reach - catching the Sun’ in a rough rendering of mine and Abhijnaa Kavita.

The Passion for sexual passion is indescribable and poets give it various formulations and describe, comment or explain it in myriad forms. Sometimes, not every time, there cannot be orgies! Here are two of Sumanasree’ s poems which need the reader’s understanding of sizzling passion.

An Electrifying Passion in Midsummer

Mirages of the hoy sun walk behind me
A thousand waterfalls carrying mountains
Are inviting me
Like herds of elephants which had mud washes
Are making I a rain of flowers filled with pollen
Dried up trees are yearning for water
Welcoming me to eat fruit hungrily
Sending invitations from lodgings for the honoured ones
Digging deep with their roots again and again
Feeling sad to be losing their greenness
Trembling – drawing breath from the depths of the land
A red rose has been throwing a glance at me
Hiding her tears from a leaf just sprouted
Stones breaking are becoming silver idols
Sculpting themselves as statues
Like flowers dropping from hair buns
Are dropping from the ramparts of fortresses
~*~
With feet sans footwear walking in hot sun
Thorns of fire are giving excruciating pain
In the sand that got singed like iron the feet are burnt

Before quenching thirst with sweet water in the coconut
Above the hot winds carrying to the hot hills
Singing down lines like one in deep devotion
For the fire with wind shock
The breathless thin paper travels in the air
The hell-heaven, hotter than midsummer
I don’t know where it is!
~*~
For the yellow flower sampenga my lady love stretched her hand
Jumping up the tree I picked up a bunch of flowers
And spread them in her lap
I saved safely two tender lemons between my eyelids, secretly
With my lips the fruit of my penance – my lady’s sweet lips!
The wild summer destroying our love
Makes us sweat streaming down from our persons
I embraced nature – with nothing else to be done
Between my two eyes, I beautified a letter as a respectful mark of blood on her brow
All the young women on the trees in their gowns are watching us
With their half nude eyes
The very sun who gave us hope on both the tree of girls and flowers
Have been throwing the net of death for whatever reason
A light thrust itself right into my eyes blinding me.
Feeling that midsummer is only temporary, offering obeisance to the sun
The eye is opening herself!

Opening the after-dream gates

Opening the after-dream gates, the drop of lovemaking melts
In moon light the diamond studded flag mast gets heated up
Extending hands with finger-tips the boat’s sa
Jumping noisily into the mid-ocean’s waves
Between the foams, nerves becoming broken
Is reading a line of poetry with the end of the chapter
In high-looking glass standing erect, two shapes
Sending up steams from the bodies would be swimming between the waves
There would be no signs of the world any where
No trees of wind in their breathing over the red hill tops
A pair of birds flies away into the clouds
Building an electric mansion, going on effulgently again and agin
Once becoming c and frozen
The winged couple gets exhausted, flying and flying
Between their wings a tear drop is frozen
On the retina of the eye of the portrait the momentary passion invisible
Would be hanging unseen
The soma rasa oozing up in in the hair-holes
On the faces tired and distraught
The black dust of the forehead is exhausted
All over the body the salty exude
If in the sand fingers are dipped and smelt
The signs of the blood flows one observes
Love making dropping in drop by drop meets and flows
A feeling of bliss/comfort between faith without fear
Gets into the body in the sheaf of experience shines another nose stud!

Sumanasri, Dr Chellapilla Kameswara Rao (b.1947) is a mechanical engineer. He worked in umpteen industries, got several degrees both academic and institutions like B H E L. He specialized in various aspects like intellectual and property rights etc. He publishes poetry collections Mahaswapnam and Geethan puneetha mautundi.

Expression of grief requires delicacy and brevity. Here is poet who grieves the death of his dad and writes about his father’ departing message too in similar pithiness.

Naanna (Dad) is not there

Into the village I set foot
With trepidation
It’s not any city or place far away
Surely Naana wouldn’t come.

With umpteen nests
The neem had grown up
In a single night
It has crumbled aside

For this Ugadi
No flowers not even delicate flowering
What remains is a bitter chutney

The speaker bemoans the absence of his Dad; compares to the Neem a strong tree which has fallen.
On Ugadi, Telugu New Year Day a chutney is made with the nine tastes Only what remains is the bitter taste.

Take care of Amma (Mom)

‘Rei!”
Your coming is late
I cannot get up again
Need the support of four
I used to ‘kill’ you laughing
Now I cannot laugh

My body needs rest
Son!
Take care of amma!!

Thammineni Yadukula Bhushan, lives in New Jersey with his wife, a Bengali. He published his Telugu translations of major European poets. Currently he is engaged in rendering Tao Te Ching from ancient Chinese.

Good poetry creates a heart-cleaving thunderous effect. The more the poet speaks the less the reader/listener feels or understands. Here are a couple of samples.

A Moment

Every time they fly
Landing safely
Are not the aero planes.

Permanently travelling
Only on the tracks
Are not trains.

From merriness
From joy
To slip into an accident
It takes a moment.

Query

In the house in darkness
With drops slow
The iron leg shining
No fear for its blow in its presence

Never would I fear
Of people’s ridicule
Even a bit

The heat of the Sun I can count
I’m friend of His
In the night the radiance of the Moon
The ebb and flow of the blank and white
Full Moon and No Moon
Only the difference I know

Seasons pursuing in their colors
Blood stains of the movement of the heart
In this creation marks of wild beasts
Wondrous strange creatures

Ideas never ending
‘Who is a man
Who is humane and full one?’
I shout like a heart-breaking thunder

Garikipati Pavan Kumar lives in Bengaluru. He collaborates with his wife in translation of texts from Telugu into Assamese. Currently the duo is engaged in rendering Pablo Neruda. Telugu readers would be delighted to read Neruda’s poetry.

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