LET THEM BE, THOSE CITIES THAT HAVE GROWN OLD - ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF H. S. SHIVA PRAKASH'S "Haage Bittubidi Muppaada Shaharugalannu" ಹಾಗೇ ಬಿಟ್ಟುಬಿಡಿ ಮುಪ್ಪಾದ ಷಹರುಗಳನ್ನು

Kannada original: Haage Bittubidi Muppaada Shaharugalannu 

ಹಾಗೇ ಬಿಟ್ಟುಬಿಡಿ ಮುಪ್ಪಾದ ಷಹರುಗಳನ್ನು

Poet: H. S. SHIVA PRAKASH

English translation: S. Jayasrinivasa Rao

 

LET THEM BE, THOSE CITIES THAT HAVE GROWN OLD

 

Let them be, those cities that have grown old

Let them grow old without ever hiding their age

like those enchantingly-aged mortal beauties

 

Look there, those faded walls 

smeared with dust, traffic-smoke stains

The now-rusted gates

that transported to actual orchards

from crumbling multi-storeyed apartments

Hanging like the grand ideals that we abandoned, 

those balconies

That narrow lane is plunging forward 

between the phantoms of cramped houses on either side

 

On the sticky walls of those temples

layers and layers of dried-up oil 

There once resided talkative gods

 

Don’t laugh looking at all these

Don’t mock saying we’ll restore them

 

Allow them to grow old in their silence

narrating their stories in their silence

 

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AMMA’S FLUTE - English translation of B. M. BASHEER's "AMMANA KOLALU" ಅಮ್ಮನ ಕೊಳಲು

Dear friends ... here is my English translation of B. M. Basheer's Kannada poem AMMANA KOLALU ಅಮ್ಮನ ಕೊಳಲು ... sometime during last year, I had bought a set of Kannada poetry books and Mr Basheer's 'Amma Hachchida Ole' ಅಮ್ಮ ಹಚ್ಚಿದಒಲೆ was one of them ... I was immediately struck with the four lines that appear on the cover ... I had also shared that on my wall here ... I had always wanted to try my hand at translating one of his poems and I tried ... 

AMMA’S FLUTE

 

The other day I had

attended a flute concert ...

I saw his effort at creating 

music out of his breath

I remembered my mother

 

Sitting in front of the earthen 

stove in the kitchen

She would put an iron pipe,

similar to the bamboo pipe,

to her lips and blow into it

A tune would emerge

Leaning against her back

I would savour the tune

 

Like a sleeping serpent

suddenly unfurling its hood,

the damp firewood

on hearing the tune 

would set itself ablaze

 

To the remembered

music of my mother

who blew into the iron flute

and lit the fire in my heart,

this musician’s flute is 

damp firewood

 

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