Poems on Poetry and Language

Language
by Divya Sahithi


What's a language?
Is it the love when my waggy-tailed pooch,
Sits beside me, teary-eyed,
Sharing my pain for my broken brooch?

Or when two pilgrims of a different tongue,
Connect and unite through gestures,
With each other, they belong,

Is it the one,
That webs together crippling hearts,
Or the one,
That hammers one to pieces?

Or is it,
A sequence of rules, that kids try to knit,
Or a puzzle of symbols, grownups try to decrypt?

Or Perhaps the one,
That divides men sharing the same blood,
Or the one,
That unites men from far and wide,

Is that what 'language' is,
Or is it a mere necklace of words,
Or a bunch of golden keys,
To unlock the secrets that lie within?



**

By Chinmay Paradkar




'कविता का उद्गम'

चिन्मय


जब तन्हाई के मेले में दिल खुद से बातें करता है
जब दिमाग में लाख सवालों का सैलाब उमड़ता है
जब हक़ीकत चुपके से कानों में कुछ कहती है
जब उदासी शाम-सवेरे इस चेहरे पर रहती है


जब हाँ और ना के बीच फासला हद से बढ़ता जाता है
जब आहिस्ता हर एक ख़्वाब सूली चढ़ता जाता है
जब किस्मत से एक जंग हर रोज़ हारी जाती है
हर रोज़ जब कुछ सपनों की नज़र उतारी जाती है


जब सही-ग़लत का भी हिसाब कर पाना मुश्किल लगता है
जब घर, दफ्तर या कोई सफर कहीं नहीं दिल लगता है
जब माँ राशन की डायरी में खर्चे दवाओं के लिखती है
जब बूढ़ी चार आँखों में कोई लाचारी-सी दिखती है


जब खामोशी के सूखे को कागज़ का दरिया मिलता है
जब सोये कुछ जज़्बातों को लफ्ज़ों का ज़रिया मिलता है
जब टूटे दिल और ख़्वाबों का शब्दों से संगम होता है
तब ऐसे मन से यार मेरे कविता का उद्गम होता है…



*


Translation:


When the heart speaks to himself in loneliness
When the mind is of full of questions
When reality silently whispers something in ears
When sadness lies on this face day-in, day-out


When the bridge between 'yes' and 'no' keeps on increasing
When every aspiration gets crucified slowly
When a battle is lost against the destiny everyday
When every dream is looked after daily


When it's tough to decide between 'right' and 'wrong'
When it's home, workplace or any other journey doesn't make you feel in the moment
When mother writes his medical expenses in grocery list
When there is helplessness seen in four aged eyes


When the draught of silence finds the river of paper
When sleeping emotions find means of words
When broker heart and dreams meet prompts and phrases
Then such heart and soul creates the magic of poetry.


*


Legacy of Poems
by Vidya Premkumar


My grandmother loved words.

She tasted them, a spoonful at a time,

her tongue slurping, mind checking

the ingredients, reaching

for the subtle missing flavours. A second spoon of tasting

and she is ready to serve.



Clearing her throat,

testing her pitch,

leaning into the dim light of the valakku,

drawing in her eager grandchildren,

the flickering lamp’s light

shadow dancing on our faces,

she served us classic Malayalam poems:

releasing them from the restrictions

of written words and letting them

mingle with the sounds

of the crickets chirping, dogs barking and

the distant bus grunting up the mountain roads.



I was a transplanted seed, growing up in a metro.

The homely Malayalam dissipated

in the melting pot of three other languages

I was learning at school. The broth of languages

swirling in my head was a liquified mix

where words from three languages

replaced what could not be found or remembered

in one.



So, on those summer nights,

when the slow melodious poems

poured into my senses,

my mind would blink,

like the glow worms amongst the vast shadows of trees,

as recognition hit on some words

and skipped on some.



Like a still river flowing,

calm on the surface, holding its banks,

but swirling underneath,

my grandmother’s poems flowed

stirring up memories,

as my eyes drooped

from the mathematical equations

running black on white.

Then, like Archimedes' bath,

Eureka!

Some unknown words would find meanings

in the recesses of my mind, as the poems

looped in continuity.

Suddenly, the lost meanings of lines

opened up its windows

and let me in.



My grandmother played with poems.

She performed them

as if in a reality show of Antakshari:

Singing a chain of poems

with similar starting words or letters

or even random words.

Poems hung around her in her daily routines,

as she hummed them under her breath

all year long.




My mother grew up, enchanted by poetry.

When her bloom opened in the city,

a thousand kilometre away, she wrote

and crooned poems in Malayalam,

like her mother,

harking her heart back to the green valleys

and mountains of her village

and the tall woman in a sooty kitchen.

On summer nights

when the capricious electricity

went off, she recited her mother’s poems

making a small well of longing

in her children for a village

they were not born in.



So,

when the fatigue of living

ground me down and the city life

blurred my vision and mind,

the poems of my grandmother and mother

drew me back to the small state

to transplant myself

and grow anew, breathing in a language

that my emotions lived in.


**

If Silence Were A Language
By Ananya Sarkar



If silence were a language
Would you learn it?
If silence were a language
Would you make it your own?

Would it help you breathe better?
Smile better, cry better and feel better all the things in between?

But most important of all
If silence as a language reigned the world
Would we look at each other
Less or more?
Well, there lies an open door.

*

Baasa 

By Shravan K

Some nights,

it is a nib that

with a longing 

pleads,

'Can you write tonight,

that I might kiss my beloved?'