Telugu language is very rich regarding literature. We are presenting two important poets of Telugu - Bala Gangadhara Tilak and Ismail. During my last visit to Hyderabad, it was my privilege to read these poets through Dr V Kondal Rao’s translations. I hope Kritya's readers will enjoy the poems of these poets.
 

Bala Gangadhara Tilak

(1921-1966)---A poet, novelist, a story writer,. a thinker par exellence, a language inventor..A Sahitya Akademi Award Winner.
 

Dr V Kondal Rao says:

A thinker evergreen,
An explorer of poetic pearls
Who chose the words
As though out of constellations.
Thoughts,
As though out of confluences of fragrances.

A human par excellence
Who was
As much rocked and shocked
With all that is callous
Casual and cruel in living
As was moved and touched
With the noble, the gentle and the genial in life.

A poet of rare ability
Sensibility and creativity
Who played the music of his muse
With the most musical of words
Philosophical of thoughts,
Made voyages into the
Vistas and visions of awakening.

A philosopher, a dreamer,
A human humane to the core,
Tilak Bala Gangadhara,
The poetry's "Vain" (blessing)
Who has revealed through these pages,
The essence, the quintessence,
The ‚lan and the ethos of
life and living.

*
Poems by Bala Gangadhara Tilak

*
MY POETRY

My poetry is not mere philosophy,
Neither is it my psychology, nor ideology,
Nor some confusion, age-bitten illusion.

Oceans of moonshine of glassy waves,
Lamps lit by jasmine scents,
Pillars inlaid with emeralds in enchanting worlds
Are the strange, the exotic, the exquisite objects
Of my aromatic, artistic, verse-abode.

Creatures of utter agony and anguish
Destined to unknown parts on arduous paths,
Nerves of steel of righteous heroes,
Effulgent love, ennobling sacrifice, emancipating gospel
Are the sheen and the swing of my poetic-sword.

My words are the doves of compassion
Drenched in a downpour of tears.
My words are "The Iravatas"
(The mythical elephants of celestial realms)
Mounted by the people's powers.
My words are the beautiful belles
Pirouetting picturesque under the moonlight.

**
TONIGHT

Tonight,
Darkness lurked
In the joints of life
Like a lightning, like a sprain.

Tonight.
Earth ripped open its ruptured bosom
Exposing its strange pain
Embedded in its cracks and crevices,
Like the gnawing nerves, the aching vein.

Tonight,
I had a word with despair
With an indic, a sign.
In a void, a vacuum,
In an inaudible tone.
Intone.

***

MAGNA CARTA

We are the men,
We are the wren,
We are the lights,
The bliss-brights.

Stirring the hearts, the hearts within,
Setting the strings, the strings within,
As waves ebbing at every song,
Notes floating at every word,
We will sing,
We will ring.

We are the new-learners, the newness-churners,
Fastening the lamps to the shores of the earth,
Composing the tunes to the songs of the stars,
As a silver thread to song and song,
A flaming distance to word and word,
We will fare,
We will dare.

We are the "Moderns",
The "Progressives",
Detonating the dynamites
Into the hearts of the renegades,
Melting the moonshine
In the minds of the futurists, the hares,
As the heavens in swing at every song.
The lions up sprung at every word,
We will sail,
We will hail.
We are the brighty,
We are the mighty,
We don't believe in subversion or slavery,
In magic's mesmery, logic's jugglery.
For us, commonsense is the touchstone,
Compassion, the halo-crown.
We can't tolerate exploitation,
Forgive suppression, oppression,
Pretend in a divinely fashion.
Clipping the wings of the people who air,
Showering the flowers on the realists the faii
Like the oceans rising at every song,
The tears welling at every word,
We will glow,
We will flow.

****

SUMMER

Sleep creeps like the sneaking underneath the fan,
Life languishes like the lost somewhere in a maze, haze.

Outside, heat settles like the stay put,
Like a burning stainless steel sheet.

In the trunk of the tree, a hungry lizard
Pants and palpitates as the fainting.

Breeze blows hot, like a sizzling ingot.
Mind, appears infinity-bound, on a slippery ground.

Though it is time for summer
The lingering reminiscence of spring still haunts
As if it is still the wanted, still the wanting.


POEMS OF ISMAIL

*
EXPERIENCE

Having been told
"We should learn from our experiences",
I dug open the buried,
Brought back the remains.

Lo! When I assembled
The soft and the hard
They resembled the form of a strange creature.
Said extinct five lakh years ago.

POETRY.

One beautiful belle placing a secret in my hand
Disappeared as quickly as she visited and smiled.

Then on
Having fixed it in my hand
Nursed to sprout into a plant, grow into a tree
Climbing its branches, extending into the horizons
I am traveling miles and miles in an unending search, infinite
research.

FOUNTAIN.

ME; Stream! O Stream!!
How are you able to sing daily
In that tone of an in-echoing string.

Stream! See! My life is full of stones
How would they melt if I don't sing?

CYCLONE.

I am just a swirl-whirl of a dry leaf to her love-A storm.
But this storm is different.
It parts as if not apart.
Takes a dip down like a frown
Returns to the tree like a part again.
AFTER THE HANDS ARE BURNT.
I came to you to pick your shimmer-shines of smiles.
But they pricked me all over.
Whatafoollam!
I thought "All that glistens is soft like a waft".

WINDOW.

I know what should be in, out.
All that I know.
But then
Why is this here, neither "In", nor "Out"?
What for?

SHE.

It was said.
In her childhood
The doll that she much loved
She threw into the fire pit of patriotism.

No wonder
When she grew
She threw the nation itself she much loved
Into the fire
For the sake of herself

TREE – MY IDEAL.

Like the bird
Off its bow Ä the tree
Roaming and roving as an arrow oblivious of its aim.

Like the insect
Struck into the earth
As a screw in the cork
In the course of splitting the crust.

The tree
Half-insect, in-fixed into the earth.
Half-bird, out-shooting into the sky.

THE TREE THE PARROTS FLOCKED.

At some twitter-twitter outside
I looked out of my window
Wondering at what it could be.

There it was, the tree
All by itself outstretched as ever.
Wherefrom was that sound then
That prattle like stir-whisper?

Lo! The Parrots! My Discovery!
The whole lot of them, a tree-full!
What a fun it was to look at, a kaleidoscopic run
Through those mushy leaves!

As I traced them one after the other with their wobbling cones
and crests
Glistening like split-fires, sapphires
It dawned on me that
No, not a tree but an Epic it was
A book of profound verses.


MAN. 0 MAN!

Man, 0 Man!
See the bird that flies over the sky.
Knows no borders,
Stays not like the stay put,
Lays not a border line around.

Man, 0 Man!
See the tree
That has made the birds learn flying.
What is the language in which it sprouts?
The tongue in which it blossoms?

What is the language of the lips of the beloved that sip?
The speech of the hands that around each other unlock
Underneath the extending shades of the
Extents of the casuarina tree.

Man, 0 Man!
See the butterflies, "The Theethers"
The variegated bees and the birds
That swim in the greeneries Ä
The blithe spirits.
Are they not the same Ä their languages
Wherever be they be?

Man, 0 Man!
Sweet shall be sweet sour the sour.
They don't turn into some other
Addressed in a language some other.

MY CYCLE.

Like my poetry
I don't know
Whether I am carrying it or it is carrying me.

Between the sky and the road
The wheels roll and rotate in the middle.
Much of it in the sky
Just a little over the land.

After we reach home
Like the airs of the airy eve-teasers, dreaming dandys
Losing much of their much made of valour like a vapour
Dangling one wheel on the land, floating one in the dream
Retires, resolving to go to sleep
Like myself and my poetry.

LEFT BANK, PARIS

One hurls the angler into the river "Seine"
And sits by its shore.
An effort to catch the fish
Fishing in the depths of his eyes.

On the other side of the shore
The effort of the Notre Dame Cathedral
To catch something with its steeple.

On this side of the shore abetting the road
An artist hides having hurled his brush into the paint box.
Don't know, what subtle and sublime creature to catch?
What for, the watch?

THE PLAY.

Do you remember the nights that we spent in plains
Away from the habitations,
far away from the inhabitants.

Were not that, we
Who moved over the planks of the sky
Like the chess pawns?

Do you remember
In the love play
Having cast our organs as the bates of passion
It was we, who moved the stars themselves as the play pawns
Throughout the nights.

Where have they gone my darling? Those nights!
The breezes that blew the bugles for us day by day
Don't do it today.
But the play goes on, the bugles too bugle
Only the players change, the playing.

RAMBRANDT

How to catch the golden glides of those shimmering cheeks
To sift, shift them to a canvass
The gleams too, the glitters
The shimmers, the shin-shines of clothes adorning the arms,
Of nestling necklaces glistening like the golden laces around?

First of all, invite the darkness of the night, the dead dark.
Inflict a few incisions of melancholy in them.
From the wounds so inflicted
The golden color blood wood ooze
Through the gold colour clothes.
Now, the shines would effuse from them to instill, to infuse.

PICASSO.

A strange artist of the art of Le Art Ä no Art.
More erasive than raisive.
Removes the bonds that bind and blind our eyes.
Creates space for his brush.
From then on
Our eyes learn
How to put on the new goggles
A new art indeed to look for, to look on.

HONEY.

If a "Yaksha" comes with a bag of coins
Asks me whether I would like to have money or Honey (my son)
I would break his head with a stone
Take money to give it to Honey.

ASSES IN ANANTHAPUR.

Two asses, maybe a combine.
One standing this side, another that side
As if in a trance.

Agreeing
"Who knows which way wisdom would dawn",
They decide to man both the sides, North and the South
One at one end, another at another.

Suddenly, the one manning the South bursts out into a neigh
Coming back to its original position
Running for some time round and round around.
The second one would neither move nor ask
As to what happened for the other one to so happen
Knowing full well that wisdom would only dawn
From this but not from that end.

THE SONG OF LIBERTY.

The insect binds the bird
That flies across the sky.

The pins of the clock bind the sun
That would not otherwise stop even for a mini- second

The arms of the sea bind the moon
That fleets across as the blocked, the enlockcd.

The turns of the road bind the wheels
That roll themselves around.
The scorching waves of summer bind
The tongue that wouldn't stop to brag like a nag.

The canal the mute binds the dusk, the sunset
The withered, the smothered, the wrinkles beset.

The roots of the, earth bind the strains of rains
Like the groping fingers in the dark for the ushered in.

The mast of the ship binds the arrow speed of the air
Sweeping in like the shaking, breaking, unmaking.

This man binds that, that man binds this
"Humanity" binds both with a winding rewinding strain.

INSOMNIA.

The eye gaped
Like a pit just dug in the graveyard.

I am a body, unattended like an orphan
Dragged to a corner for want of a `filler'.

Ask any of the blessed ones
Who can fill my eye
For at least an hour.

If someone takes my plea kindly
I will rise to the sky to pardon all the sinners
Like the Christ braving a new birth to save.

YOU.

Only when you are bare,
Only when for your robes you hardly care
You are mine,
Otherwise of the world.
I will tear the world into pieces someday
Spear `them' to end up in threads, shreds.

NAVAL BHAVE.

The name of this scoundrel is Ravi.
As soon as the day breaks on him to wake
He creates an illusion.
On a span of hand as small and short as the palm
He means to settle all the beings, all of them as if on a platter.
Awaking them all from their slumber.

In his view, there are only two classes-
The haves, the have-nots.

All my properties are only my two bags.
Even then he won't let off, keep quiet
Until he mixes
Divides them, among all.

Dragging them, mixing, admixing
He fixes each one’s shares and parts
Giving mine too as a part.

I couldn't understand so far
Whether we should call him the Naxalite or the Sarvodite.
Maybe both, maybe they are the same
Though not called by the name, the very same.

SUICIDE.

That girl sped like a speed Äspark.
Plucking off the thorn from her bosom
Called "The World"
Pinned under pain on her, with an alpin.

PATRIOTISM.

In the market yard of timber
Logs lie pasted red at the ends
Looking like war-slit bodies,
With one difference

If the other ones are not taken to the graveyard
To lay them to rest
They would decompose, shrink and sink
But these
The more they are let off, to be lone, alone
The more they become seasoned, the merrier, the happier
The more musical, the cultural
A `finery' to home as furniture.