Two Dalit Poems in translation

My Poem

My poems do not narrate a story,
And don’t intend
falling into the spaces and triads of music.
To the rhythms of tunes, rhymes, drums,
- they don’t respond.

They contain no deceit, no pre-meditated device
With no fascination to lure scholar or saint.
The seductions of the ecstasies of the thoughts of the powerful
are not hailed in my poetry

All the historically created light is paleness for me…
my senses don’t bloom to their metaphors of
the first rains etc.
My poems do not encourage those pretenses
of the clothed bodies

Life tells…
it exposes the rhythms
of life’s
cruel denials.
From the toiling bodies
of my people
my poetry spills forth sounds
…cries of new life.

Indudhara Honnapura (Kannada Dalit thinker and writer)
Trans: Sushumna Kannan

‘Aa’ ‘aa’ and

When I opened my eyes and moved my limbs:
in the dark caves of my avva’s eyes
burned the hearth.
Surrendering his dark body to fire
appa breathed a modest beedi
while the gruel on the hearth set lives on fire.

In the caves of my avva’s breast is imprinted,
my faltering-steady-moving footsteps.
When they stood perplexed amidst the (i)school’s walls…
appa’s moustache fell at the feet of the kumkum pasted master
looking onto the floor.

Amidst the ‘a’ ‘aa’ letters learnt on the dark board
I found avva’s, appa’s dreams.
Our city, colony, cemetry were found
in the depths of skeletal structures were found
a few expressions.

searching and probing,
when delved deeper,
questions arose for which khaki clad limbs formed
moustaches grew
and I was dissolved in the dark!

But
When on the torn walls of my inherited mansion
a aa had first appeared
avva’s kisses
on the cheek
have remained
the punctured coin that appa gave is
bound in the loin thread
just the way it had been.

Govindayya (A Kannada Dalit poet)
Trans: Sushumna Kannan