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Translations of Mahaprasthanam poems by Dr. Kallury Syamala
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Man! O Man
In the movement of the zodiac
Amidst the changes of night and day
In the circles of the orbit
That rotates the planets,
The one that emerged from the
Will of the atom that
Moved ages ago
Man, O Man!
Worshipper of beauty
In poetry and sculpture, in an insect and a flower
In the lightning and the cloud
The worshipper of beauty!
The one who lives
The one who enjoys, mourns,
And despairs, the warrior!
The lover!
One who pines, meditates,
Who rejoices and renounces!
The one who reasons
Who in perpetual quest
Amongst the trees, ponds,
On the edges of water, in the snake holes
The one who searches!
The restless one, knowing no defeat!
Who looks up all the time! The great one!
Great traveller!
Man, O, Man!
The one who fights, envies, thinks narrow,
Alas man,
Oh, Man!
The one who fights for prevailing dharma,
The one who cannot tolerate injustice
Ideologue, Mahatma, Man!
In Asia, America, and in Europe
Africa and Australia
In the isles of the sea,
In the cities and towns
The rich or the poor
Young or old
While Black or Brown, Red or Yellow
Strong or meek
The one who lives and sings Man, O Man!
The one who belongs to one family,
Of one blood
Man, O Man!
The one who speaks several tongues
Who roams in several regions,
Who sheds multifaceted lights!
The good hearted one, the kind one
The one who travels rightful paths!
The one who crosses the deep seas
Deserts and climbs high mountains
The one who searches the high skies
And researches the stars
The thirsty one, the reflecting one!
The one who built bridges
Hospitals, museums,
Libraries, factories,
Trains, ships and planes
The one who achieved foresight and
Farthest hearing
Man, O Man!
The one who revels in aesthetic delights
Poet, dancer, sculptor, musician, philosopher
Scientist and thinker
The sorrowful one, the kind one
The one who can feel the pain of others,
The one who cannot lift a hand to kill an ant even
The Buddha and
Jesus!
Social animal, hard labourer,
The one who wears body as garb
The cloud that rains sweat
A member of a family of collective veins
Laborer, factory worker, O Man!
Wage earner, Gardener, farmer,
The one who lives in huts
Who lives on thin starch
The one endowed with many children
The eye of hunger, O Man!
The one who rebels and questions
The one who is not afraid to
Fall a prey to injustice
Prisoner
Rowdy
Murderer
Baby
Man, O Man!
2. Contrasts
Srirangam Srinivasa Rao (Sri Sri)
Lucky you people are!
You love light!
You hate shadows!
You have metal walls
Between good and evil!
Your thoughts move around
In a good room only!
The room was there even earlier!
That’s why your life is
A full meal served on a leaf!
Your decisions are irrevocable!
Your ideas on good
Etiquette, manners,
Behaviour, quality
And values are all
Irrevocable, predetermined!
Straight are the lines of your glances!
If the lines distort you raise hue and cry!
The people on the other side of the line
Are all criminals!
All your courts, security, police
Are there to protect this line!
To protect only, all the prisons and gallows!
*** *** *** *** *** ***
We are the unfortunate ones!
We travel in twilight zones!
On paths that have no borderlines!
We have problems and predicaments!
We see only darkness in light!
And fireflies of hatred!
One virtue amongst hundreds of sins!
One gruesome act amongst hundred virtues!
Every step of the way,
Only wide chasms, and wounds!
We have to make our own meal!
We don’t get leaf plates even sometimes!
Our attraction is only for
The narrow lanes!
Our sight goes only in circular lines!
With no beginning, no end!
We are the creatures of twilight!
Products of doubt!
Questions and questions!
Answers that never satisfy!
We have no walls!
Our job is to break them!
Agitation is our life!
Protest is our breath!
Rebellion is our philosophy!
Thorns, boulders and many more obstacles
Our step always goes forward!
The place you have is enough for you!
You are even prepared to go back!
Some of you!
We go forward!
And the world will walk behind us!
You die a contented death!
The world will forget you!
People who do not care for troubles
In the way of keeping their convictions will join us!
Those who change their convictions
In search of pleasures will go with you!
The Great Forward March
A different world
A different world
A different world is calling!
March forward
Push ahead
Onward we march!
Stamping the feet
Singing a song
Roaring from the depths of our hearts
Let’s march ahead!
Can you not hear the
Waterfall from the other world!
March forward
All along the way offering
Your bleeding hearts!
Walk the pathways, streets
And cross the forts!
The rivers, forests, mountains and
Deserts, what can stop us!
Let’s march forward, push ahead!
Onward we march!
The ones with rotten bones and aged bodies
The lazy bones, death be upon you!
The ones with boiling blood and
Soldiers with energy filled
Come on! Join the march!
Harom Harom Hara[1]
Hara Hara Hara Hara
Move forward
Chanting Harom Hara!
A Different world
A great one
Pervades the whole earth!
Roar like a great wind,
Flow like a swift thought!
Burst forth like a dark cloud full of rain
Move on, March ahead!
Can you not see the burning
Tretaagni[2] of
the other world!
Eighty thousand Merus[3] are
Leaping and jumping
The great seas are going round and round
In a great dance of destruction!
Is it the boiling oil, no!
It is a pond of hot blood
Leap high like Sivasamudra[4] and Niagara
Jump and leap!
March forward
March ahead!
The gong of the other world
Is tolling tirelessly!
Like the snakes and reptiles
Go forward like a Dhananjaya[5]
Can you not see the dazzle of the
Crown of fire, of the other world
A different world!
The fluttering red flag!
The rising flames of the altars? (12-4-1943)
Victory Gong
I too have
Added fuel to
The fire of theworld!
I too have given a tear to
The cyclonic storm of the world!
I too have added
My wild voice to the
Roar of the world!
*** *** ***
When the summer’s
Blazing Sun scorched the earth
I too burnt like an owl!
When the rains drenched the soil
I too have turned into
Drops of water flowing freely!
When the winter’s biting cold
Seized I too screamed
Freezing and hungry!
If I stop in my tracks
Blazing winds, rainy clouds and snowflakes
Will turn into ashes
On this earth!
The colorful stars that peep from
The sky explode,
And rain down, bleeding!
All days shatter
And nights shut down
Engulfing the world in a great deluge!
*** *** ***
I alone will occupy
The whole world
A time will come
When my crooning tunes
Fill the world!
I too will blossom as
A white petal
In the flower of the world!
I too will become
A string in the Veena[6]
Of the world
And lose myself in its music!
I too will rise
And flutter as a flag
Atop the palace of the world! (2-6-1933)
One Night
Like a smoke that pervades
The whole sky,
The waxing moon of the fifth day
Rising scares me
Alas! On the desert sky
There rises a sandstorm tonight!
The spirits, invisible and shrewd roam free
Between the earth and the sky!
The sea screams loudly
With an open mouth!
The hillock lies still
Like an elephant’s corpse!
The moon on the lonely sky
Looks like a camel
That has lost its legs!
Filling the whole universe like an ash
The rising moon of the fifth day scares me! (12-8-1933)
Rukkulu[7]
A puppy
A matchstick
And a toilet soap
Don’t look down on anything
They are all full of poetry!
A piece of bread,
A banana peel,
A log of wood
Stare at you
Challenge you to measure their depth!
A door bolt
An Aarti[8] tray
A horse’s rein
What is not worthy of poetry?
Yes, the style is unfathomable!
Only you should have poetic inspiration!
Go on create poetic delights!
Can you not find a thin string of grace?
See if you have the sight
Write if you have the word
The world is a maze!
And Poetry is an unquenchable thirst! (14-4-1934)
Incarnation
The metallic bells of Yama’s
Buffalo clanged
Behind the clouds!
The ferocious canines of
Hell pounced
Breaking free of their leashes!
The seven horses of the Sun’s
Chariot ran
Frothing at their mouth!
The angry lion of Goddess Kanakadurga
Yawned shaking its mane!
The elephant that Indra rides roared, challenging!
Nandikesa jumped and shouted
Giving his mane a vigorous shake
The Great Boar who rescued the Vedas
Stretched his tusk and trumpeted!
Labor pains for mother earth
Heralded a new birth! (14-4-1934)
(The rebelling vehicles of the Gods, signify a new revolution)
An Ode to Childhood
Sins, virtues and the ways of the world
Troubles, comforts, associated meanings
You are the flowers unaware of these!
The children of five six years!
If there is lightening
If there is rain
If there is a rainbow in the sky
You are the young ones
Who think that all these are for you!
Birds!
Children!
Who with no aim or destination,
Whistling away, fly
Here, there and everywhere!
On the green meadows
In the lotus filled ponds
In the fields, playhouses
In the arms of the father
In the lap of the mother
Dusty bodies, heavy hips
With fingers in the mouth and milky cheeks
Wherever one sees you are there
Your cosmic presence
As divine creatures
O young children!
Yours, and yours is the whole universe!
You’re the destiny of the world!
Your smiles shape the
Bright dawns of tomorrow!
The queen of seasons, the spring,
Opens it magic window, for you!
The metal buffalos breathe
The hot winds of the summer, for you
And the rainy season which
Engulfs the fields, villages, and all else
The clear nights, moon filled,
The snow filled winters
Cold and shivering
They come and go,
Playing hide and seek
For you
Today, like every day,
The Sun moves on the sky
The winds blow, the flowers bloom
I see multi-starred
Multi-colored ethers
Songs from all sides
You are the inheritors
For all these!
They shine on your lives too!
I look for the echoes of the tunes
Of my lost past,
The forgotten footprints of
My bygone childhood,
I sit here alone giving
Breath to the moving breeze
As the stringed veenas sing in unison
As I cajole the streams and the deer
Taking somersaults in the hell
Measuring the depths of vaitharani[9]
With no peace of mind
And with a lonely heart
In wonder-filled restlessness
Do you feel like laughing at me!
The little squirrels
The young children
This is my song!
Will you listen? (9-6-1934)
The Traveller
For work and for food
To live in a city
Started one traveller
Turning a deaf ear to
The words of his mother
He walked for three days
Without respite, not knowing
Where to go
He wandered, lost
Like a boat tossed in an ocean
Depressed and piteous
He wandered aimlessly!
Heat of the severest nature
Rising temperature
Raised his body temperature too!
Scared was he,
Talking in dementia
Dark clouds
Ferocious winds
Rain and flooding waters
Darkness surrounding him
How tough was it for the traveller
Who had lost his way!
The mother who
With eyes glued to the door
Must be talking in her sleep
His eyes burning
The heat rising in flames
Aching head like needles piercing,
Night like a black boulder
Sitting on his chest
He dreams of his mother calling
Her form in his mind’s eye
Listening to the calls that do not
Reach the ears
His disturbed mind ruminating
How tough it is
For the traveller,
who was upset, disturbed
And lost!
That was the end of his life!
The owls screamed in the dark
Rain stopped, giving way to a
Streak of lightning in the sky!
The roosters heralded a new morning!
One comet mocked from the
Clear sky
The clear wind plays
With the traveller’s corpse!
The mother woke up
From a nightmare, her stomach churning! (18-5-1934)
An Old Beggar Woman
By the roadside, under a tree
Like the coals that have gone cold
Sat one old woman,
Groaning, and annoyed with the
Flies that surrounded her!
Her head is like one covered with lime
Wrinkled body
Eyes pale and lightless
A corpse seemed better!
She was laid up with disease
Not in a position to even beg
Winter was going to set in
A hapless old destitute woman was she!
Growing old, with her joints in disarray
Losing hope all, for future
Like a boulder on the roadside
She was lying there, on the roadside.
“If that granny dies,
whose fault is it?”
The mad winds moved on
Asking the question.
The dog did not reply,
Chewing a piece of bone.
One while pushing a fly off its course
Did not say anything!
Darkness engulfed
Dust rose up suddenly
One used up leaf[10] claimed
“It is not my fault”
Losers
“What do the tired eyes see?”
A doomed dream,
A displaced heaven.
“What is it that crushes the frightened heart?”
Outside and inside-
Humans that have become enemies.
“Who would call the frustrated creatures?”
Misfortune, distress
Crazy hearts and untimely death!
The Vow
After running the ploughs
Through the fields
Producing gold from the earth
To make the world a welfare state
The farmers who work tirelessly
Sacrificing their strength
Sweat sacred and real
Can anyone put a price tag on it?
Tight, taut, veins
Vigorous arms
Dreaming of causing diamond rains
To increase the wealth of the world
The workers in the mines, jungles
And factories
Working
Dreaming
Like slaves to a rich lord
Polishing the jaws of the giant machines
With blazing burning drowning eyes
Tragic tears streaming down the cheeks
No trader can put a price on those tears!
Some despite innocence get trapped
Behind the bars due to misfortune
Some get crushed under the iron feet
Of metal demons, breathing their last breath!
Some resort to strikes as their empty stomachs
And their labours do not fetch food,
Some look for wells and pits
Their hard work in vain, life in despair
Many more, unfortunate ones
Orphans,
Restless ones
With long wails, extreme distress
Raise the banner of revolution!
Therefore, all the injustices of the world-
Burning hunger, crushing sorrow
Depravity, exploitation
To resolve them all, to banish them all
Carving new paths
Writing new songs
The new poetry that moves me
For the welfare of working masses
For the wealth of the labor world
In dedication
In consecration
In the three worlds
In the three time spans
To tell the working majority
Hard labourers
This incantatory truth
That nothing can match
The beauty of manual labor.
I will play the golden instruments
The real lives of the tragic many
I will trumpet the life music
Of the future Vedas
To the whole world!
Goldsmith’s furnace
Fisherman’s net
Weavers loom
All the instruments
That suggest work
Axe, saw, sickle, plough
The symbols of one thousand vocations
Will be
The meaning,
The wealth,
The life,
And the spiritual bugle
For my the new song, the new path
I shall write
Pledge
And create!
Auan!
If I fly sky high
Throwing sparks of fire,
Wonderstruck,
They!
If I crash down
Bleeding profusely
Mercilessly
The self same they!
Adwaitam Non Duality
If happiness is a canyon
And affection the sky,
We will see the peaks of happiness!
We will go to the depths of affection!
In the music of your bracelet,
In the nirvana of my life
The rollicking swings in your heat!
The raging fires in my heart
The blossoming buds of your thought!
The blazing sword of my love!
We will pour life into death!
We will put a ladder to heaven!
You are the queen of smiles!
I am slave of slave to addictions!
My sorrow that adds up,
Your joy that flowers on!
Spreads as gas poisonous!
Flows as honey in flowers!
We will mock the world!
We will rule the future!
You are the fine breeze of spring
I am the dew drop of winter!
The bird of your life ascends!
And the drum of my death breaks!
Into the blossoming gardens!
In the burning graveyards!
Goes round and round in circles!
Flares up again and again into storms!
We will rein in the time!
We will unbolt the doors of love!
I am the cradle of your joy!
You are the queen of my future!
The music of your bracelet
The nirvana of my life!
Happiness is the sky
Affection is a deep canyon!
We will mock the world!
We will rule the future!
History of Nations
Look at the history of any nation
What is there to be proud of?
The entire history of human race
Is one of exploiting the others!
The entire history of human race
Is one of looting from each other!
The entire history of human race
Are rivers of blood from the wars fought!
Full of the sense of the terrible
A congregation of demons and ghosts
The entire history of human race
Is roast-eating alive the deprived!
The mighty have turned the meek
Into slaves!
Murderers have made name
In history as rulers of the earth!
Search the whole earth!
Not a single place which is not a battlefield!
Past was drenched in blood
If not in tears!
Families that have gone cold
Crowds that were destroyed,
Groans of helpless people
Resound in the course of history!
Enmity, selfishness
Cunning, jealousy, competition
Fraud, impersonations
Have marked the course of history!
Chenghiz Khan, Taimurlene,
Nadir Shah, Ghajni, Ghori
Whatever is the name
Each of them a great murderer!
Vikings, Huns,
Sindhis, Parsis
Pindars, Thugs have built
A bridge of swords across time!
In the dark age of ignorance,
In hunger, anger
People provoked by
Unknown force rose up in arms!
Everything is their achievement
They are the rulers of the world,
Established their kingdoms
Made and enforced many laws!
All these collapsed like a pack of cards
When other forces raised their heads
History was born
When these forces clashed with each other!
The prolonged deceit,
Exploitations of the mighty
Schemes of the rich
Cannot go on, even now!
The social order where
One man on the other
One race on the other
This atrocity cannot go on any further!
Ricksha puller in China
Mine worker in Czech
Ship slaves in Ireland
All the oppressed helpless ones,
Hottentot, Zulu, Negro-
Races across the continents
With one voice proclaim
The historical reality!
Why was what war fought
How long each kingdom lasted
Dates and documents
Do not give meaning to history!
This queen’s saga of love
The cost incurred in that war
Politics and declarations
Are not the essence of history!
The stories that were lost, unseen,
In the dark corners of history must
Now be revealed!
A truth that cannot be hidden!
In the civilization around the river Nile
What was the life of a common man like?
In the construction of Taj Mahal
Who were the coolies that carried the stones?
In the battles fought for royals
What was the courage shown by a common soldier?
Not the palanquin ridden by the kings
Who were the people that carried it?
Taxila, Pataliputra,
On the shores of the Mediterranean,
Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro
Cave fronts of Kro-Manyan
In the twilight zones of history
How did man’s story evolve?
What nation achieved what goal
During which period?
What sculpture, what literature?
What science, what music?
What light is the destination for this journey?
What dream and what victory its goal?
Kavita! O Kavita![11]
Kavita! O Kavita!
In my youthful ambitions
Surrounded by the aura of fragrant flowers
In the days when I thought of you as
A beauty that one can meet in auspicious moments
In a beautiful garden, a beauty unreachable!
The one that wanders on the paths of the sky!
For you, my life a tapas[12]
In my quest those minutes, that intoxication
Your form invisible surrounded as you
Were by the circles illusionary, feign.
Weren’t there times when I pined for you in my
My cave, my pit, my darkness, in loneliness?
Under your influence
In my trained glances of perpetual pursuit
In trances tranquil
In my brain which hung like
Flowered arch of heaven
What roars what languages and what pictures
Passed through?
What colourful and strange shades of
Light and darkness did I see?
Through what energies did
My song acquire life?
The collectives of battle cries from all the corners
In sounds I had chosen for you;
In the cloudy midnight sky
Full of rain, the trumpets of the conch
The beat of the drums in the
Ferocious winds that reverberated in the
Waves of the mid-ocean;
That same night,
In the thick of the forests
Are they cries of different animals
Crossing the boundaries of any rhythm?
The deep inner endless music
Within the stars,
Earthquakes, the collapse of governments
Rebellion, war
Everything in your consciousness,
The appearing as of your cosmic form
Are they then the pictures that my mind’s eye shows,
The commentaries I hear
When I think of you?
The diamond that blossomed in the pond of fire
The flying metal horse
The music of the drum
In the feverish cannon
What else did I hear?
In the sleepy midnight
The inner music of a young mother, dreaming-
Hugging her infant, just born,
The sound of the infant dreaming
Of an ancient life in strange sleep,
In the hospital the sound of the blood flowing
In the veins of a patient lying with closed eyes
With the trance of the surgeon’s spell
In the twilight zones between life and death;
The mad ravings of an alcoholic
Slipping into a drain in an inebriated state!
The starving stomach of a prostitute
In wild demonic sex with half closed eyes
Her sad experiences erupt in music, terrible
The secrets that a head, beheaded, reveal
A mad man’s crazy mind sees cinemas
And cries out, like a wolf
The workers who have gone on strike
The fires of hunger, the cries of the wives
And children of workers on strike
Screams! Cries of anguish
The words of one million stars
The songs of one billion waterfalls
A hundred thousand echoes of waves of the sea
I heard them! I heard them all, My Mother!
The things I saw and heard
They came
In great numbers
Crossing the graveyards like lexicons
Breaking through the chains of grammar
Leaving the tight python-like hold of the meter
They came, the words
In a fast pace, running, galloping
They entered my heart!
In that whirlwind circles of words
That manifested the change
In what streets I wandered
Going in circles when
In the music I thus created
My sins and weakness purged
And a joyous exhilaration filled my heart
I awakening for you and with all my senses alert
Whatever I wrote saw
Breathed, my life entering a trance like
State of Samadhi[13]
The inspiration that mesmerized me
Surrendering to that divine experience
The music that emerged by
The meeting of love under the star crazed…
My veins as the strings of veena
The kiss of the divine music
At the end of my life, death at my doorstep
The procession of those instruments of music
That held me in the wild grip like an eagle’s beak
The music transcends the joys and sorrows
A wonderful, profound, thoughtful, unparalleled
Solitary, unique, transient and eternal moment divine!
The Muse’s heart who has given me this bliss
Melting my heart, Grace Incarnate,
Kavita! O Kavita!
Perhaps on the day
You created hunger feeding
My ego while I was in my mother’s womb
Shapeless and sleeping,
Infusing life to my inner and outer senses
And sensibilities
As I entered this world
Experiencing the joys and sorrows
And as traveller and a mendicant was
In this world’s journey
Going about in confusion
You, Kavita, appeared with a hand of assurance
Drew me into your fold
Made me clean and pure!
The Graceful and The compassionate,
Anupamita, One with no parallel
Aparimita, One who is limitless!
Kavita! O Kavita!
Now, today, can you hear the sighs
Behind my bold imaginations?
That I will write some things and
That my writings would reflect my world
My passion shall reach fruition and
My songs will reverberate in the hearts
Of my race as an incantation
I strive to bring my sky closer to my world
My ideas will be the sparks that light the diamonds
Which I shall share with my brethren
The ends of your stole
Fluttering causing waves
My word as your temple
My song as an offering to you
I will offer heartily
My creative fragrance sprinkled
As pollen from flowers!
Oho! Delight divine! Treasure trove! Mother! O Kavita!
Kavita! Kavita! O Kavita!
[1] Another name for Siva, This rhythmic chant is usually used when climbing great heights or on pilgrimages covering long distances
[2] Tretaagni:traditionally three kinds of agni garhapatyam, avahaniyamu and dakshinagni.Here Sri Sri might be referring to just the fire that burns during the day constantly
[3] Meru: Mythical mountain that can fly
[4] Sivasamudra: A waterfall in the current state of Karnataka
[5] Another name for Arjuna the great warrior prince of the Pandavas
[6] Veena: A stringed musical instrument popular in South India
[7] Rukkulu: Vedic hymns
[8] Aarti: a platter used to offer incense to gods
[9] A mythical river man’s spirit is supposed to cross after death to reach the higher realms of consciousness
[10] In south Indian culture food is served on almond or banana leaves on occasions
[11] An invocation to the Poetic Muse
[12] Penance
[13] Deep state of meditation
Some of comments posted on this article at the time of publication:
As of now, I can only say that this is a daring effort by you. As such, translation of poetry from one language to the other in itself is an impossible task, whereas you have taken up this with SriSri’s Works!
I hope, you are well prepared for the criticism 🙂
