WITH A POEM IT’S DIFFERENT - A. K. RAMANUJAN'S "PADYADA MAATU BE:RE" ಪದ್ಯದ ಮಾತು ಬೇರೆ

Kannada original: Padyada Maatu Be:re ಪದ್ಯದ ಮಾತು ಬೇರೆ

Poet: A. K. Ramanujan

Translated into English by: S. Jayasrinivasa Rao

 

WITH A POEM IT’S DIFFERENT

I don’t write replies to

letters.  Even if I would write, I wouldn’t

post them.  Even if I would post them,

many a time they wouldn’t reach

the addressees.  Even if the letters would reach,

they wouldn’t read them fully, they would have all kinds

of work.  Even if they would read,

I would have said something, they would have

grasped something else.  Needless ill-will due to this.

When I too get letters from others,

it’s the same story.  That’s why I don’t write

replies to letters.

 

With a poem it’s different.

When it succeeds especially,

even if it is misread

it’s a kind of reading, one’d feel,

if in a poem one locates sense in what is meaningless and useless,

all these are but various ruses to strain out meanings

unearthed from the pointless mines of stone and sand.

Everything is acceptable.  Even lies are real.

The word itself is its sense.

In its soil, specks of gold.

In its stone, a vein of silver.

Even in its mire, dim yellow eyes,

a gemstone waiting to be chiseled.

 

How did Lanka burn? “Like this!” showed Tenali Rama,

by setting fire to the homes of those who questioned history,

and amid the smoke, the ashes, and the uproar,

“look here, this is the real Ramayana,” didn’t he show them?

Like that.

*****