Ageyuvudu -- Kannada translation of Seamus Heaney's 'Digging'

This is my Kannada translation of Seamus Heaney's English poem Digging.  This is also my first attempt at translation from English to Kannada.

The original English poem:

Translating K V Tirumalesh's poems...From the banks of Osman Sagar...Osman Saagarada Dandeyinda...

Hi all...this is another Hyderabad poem of K V Tirumalesh Sir...I translated it as part of my Tirumalesh's Hyderabad Poems project...all these translations were done in the second half of last year...this is "Osman Saagarada Dandeyinda"... from his collection 'Avadha'...

From the banks of Osman Sagar

With such fierce focus, O young man,

what are you looking at? 

The proverbial footsteps of the fish or

the mysterious inner pathways of the

girl you are in love with?

What form would the broken images take

floating in from the stirrings of the restless lake.

Just like you

I’m waiting too

with bated breath.

But,

when the waves rest

and things are clear,

would we have forgotten

who we are?

§

Translating Prof. K V Tirumalesh's Kannada poems into English...Hyderabad based poems...1 Prathime - Image

Hi all … two years ago I started translating Hyderabad-based poems of eminent Kannada poet Prof. K. V. Tirumalesh, taken from his early collections, Mukhamukhi (1978) and Avadha (1986). Prof. Tirumalesh came to Hyderabad in the 1970s and stayed put; I came to Hyderabad in 1992 and stayed put. Though the Hyderabad poems are not entirely descriptive of places or people, one can get a feel of the place, and a little bit of the atmosphere and space of Hyderabad of these poems still remained in the early 1990s. Though I had read these poems in those nineties, they started resonating in a different way now; call it nostalgia. I found around 30 or so Hyderabad-based poems from Mukhamukhi and Avadha and have translated 28 so far. Some of these translated poems are due to appear in the online journal on culture studies and translation, Caesurae. Till then, I thought I’d post some of the other poems here … and get some reactions, responses, feedback, brickbats, anything …

Today’s poem is named Prathime taken from Avadha … the English translation is named Image...

Image

He came to the spot where

four roads met

and wept – and

kept on weeping.

Cars, buses,

heavy tarpaulin-covered trucks,

drove on nonstop.

The slow bullock carts too

kept on moving.

The sleeping city would wake up and

again go back to sleep in its

unperturbed lethargy,

amidst large garbage bins,

pigs in heat, and

trains that arrive from somewhere and depart.

Those sitting in the toddy shop,

women who had come to buy vegetables,

labourers waiting for work,

– none of them noticed.

Till mushrooms sprouted all around,

Till lilies grew;

The rain that came in unnoticed,

The breeze that sailed in over someone’s sigh,

The cold winter nights

– none of these touched him.

Nobody noticed when

he stood up all of a sudden;

he gathered himself,

he looked around,

started to say something,

stopped, as if wondering why should he,

and a smile that broke out hesitantly

like the secret sin in each one of us.

§

The Kannada original ...