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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