Not physically challenged
But the one who challenges Physics
He that conquers the progressively destructive
Motor neuron with a constant exercise, of knowledge!
He that stabilizes with speech synthesizer,
The word that splits into sounds and bits
He that gives a strong heart
To every being who is physically challenged.
He is the expert swimmer who with thinking hands
Swims across the cosmic sea
He is the one who does all the aerobics
In pitch dark black hole of time unknown
He is the one who on the thin strings swings on
Atoms and unborn galaxies.
He is the one who visualizes a grand design
That can explain the infinite and endless time
That mires the universe
And refuses entry even to the grand God
Of the Universe who lives in faith.
Is he lame, no!
He is handsomest man of genius.
Stephen Hawking!
A true heir to Einstein!

***

2. The Flame of One Thousand Nights

I have burnt one thousand nights for one sentence
In the cradle of [...]]]> 1. Man of the Universe

Not physically challenged
But the one who challenges Physics
He that conquers the progressively destructive
Motor neuron with a constant exercise, of knowledge!
He that stabilizes with speech synthesizer,
The word that splits into sounds and bits
He that gives a strong heart
To every being who is physically challenged.
He is the expert swimmer who with thinking hands
Swims across the cosmic sea
He is the one who does all the aerobics
In pitch dark black hole of time unknown
He is the one who on the thin strings swings on
Atoms and unborn galaxies.
He is the one who visualizes a grand design
That can explain the infinite and endless time
That mires the universe
And refuses entry even to the grand God
Of the Universe who lives in faith.
Is he lame, no!
He is handsomest man of genius.
Stephen Hawking!
A true heir to Einstein!

***

2. The Flame of One Thousand Nights

I have burnt one thousand nights for one sentence
In the cradle of whose comfort the infant sleeps
The rope that helps man to pull himself out of the deep canyon
To reach the summits of the mountains,
The call of that brings back the departing life to the body.
In the deserts of ocean’s waves, in the sandy seas of the deserts
In the sky of the forest trees, in the cloudy forests of the sky
The sentence that reverberates
The sentence that invites creatures from alien lands
The sentence that disarms all hands
The sentence that fills itself with kindness, completing it
The sentence that forms the invisible thread in garland that adorns earth’s threshold
Binding those who differ in looks, appearances, colour and blood,
For the birth of that one sentence I died thousand times.

I entered into every human being, accepted the anguish of man
Suffering with them and discovered the root of suffering
By being angry with them found the root of anger
Facing death, I conquered the fear of death
I am born again now as that one sentence an atom with a fountain of life-
A Sentence that can never be burnt or destroyed.

Sentence is my hereditary trait
The shape that has my features stamped
Like small atoms and cool flames
It ignites and spread within
Synchronizing flesh and blood
With mesmerizing and graceful moves
The creature that stands before me and talks is
A new being with a wonderful body.

One day I will not be here, my sentence will remain
Sentence will not stay but the generations that imbibed it will be!
Generations will pass on, but the world lives on.
From the silent pond of the universe another great work of art emerges.
It will enfold the entire creation under its wings
Like love infinite
Like bird, compassionate!

***

3. A Song of the Sword

He wanted to write his love letter with a sword
As witness to two thousand years of barbarism
It was written on her throat.
Love or die is the new slogan
That echoes in the human jungles.
On society’s forehead a scar of blood, like a tilak.
Half closed eyes, imaginary swings, the fragrances of dreams on pillows
Sweet pampering from mother, henna on the hands
Gold palaces of the future – all lay shattered
Only the silence of death
For a sister not connected by blood, for a daughter
My soul weeps, my letters weep
Tears are the weakness of the muse.
Buds, do not blossom,
Flowers nip off the colored fragrances
In a world which cannot tolerate the song of
The natural blossoming
It is a crime not to fall before you reach your youth
Green belts do not survive on sandy soil.
Talli, my mother, you should have been born a tree
No one lusts after a tree
You should have been born an animal
They do not go for sexual assaults
Man and only man can hunt and harass
The beauties of the world
It is only man all around
Wherever you look like ants out of ant holes
Men, men and men only!
Everything is fearless
We think only darkness begets sins
But the deserts in the cities and humiliations in public!
Independence for the swords alone
The hardened rocks that can not
Be touched by sorrow and suffering
The many, powerless, tolerate everything around
The intellectuals read new meanings
It is all darkness amidst light!

What a cinema which has closed its nine openings[1] do
Other than releasing its sperm in the immature minds
What can justice and security rings do
Other than guarding the criminals all their lives
What can rights bodies do
Other than shedding tears for the rights of the accused
What can one poem washed in the fire of pain do
In the dark and ignorant human jungles
Other than handing the weapon of anger
To mitigate the ghosts of fear from the still and
Graceful forms of women!

***

4. Along with Bottu…

Someone
Has erased her face along with her bottu
From flowers
From laughter
From her hopes
From the existence of people
From pasupu- kumkum
From the greenness of life
They ostracized her, mercilessly
For her no sweet thoughts, no goose bumps like dew drops
No fragrances from henna painted hands,
No muggu -patterns drawn with rice flour on the threshold, of her dreams

People said thus:
Poor lady, she lost her husband
The string of her veena with sacred notes, is broken.
Everyone and every comfort is a distant reality for her now.
She is bad omen for them if they see her face.
She is another word for darkness now.

She is an outpouring tears on the cheeks of society
A nonstop downpour from the depressing clouds
She is the criminal who has not committed a crime.
In fact society is a big bad omen for her.
Whenever she walks outside
She erases her own footprints as she goes along.
She never lifts her head, her eyes are rooted to the ground
She walks sliping behind many unseen questions.

If one lamp is snuffed out should we extinguish the other?
If one man dies should another’s existence end?
What about the life between having a bottu
And not having it?

I wish I come across one face without bottu everyday
Fearless and frankness should be her high brows
I wish someone would put a bottu between those brows
With love.

Bottu: A red/vermillion dot on the forehead of Indian/hindu women. It is indicative of her marital status and of the fact that her husband is alive. A woman is not supposed to wear it if she is a widow. In a ritual after the husband’s death the bottu on a woman’s forehead is erased. It is to be noted that this bottu does not come with marriage as girls wear it even before marriage right from their childhood, through their adolescence but are forced lose it once a husband dies.
pasupu- kumkum: Turmeric and kumkum with which vermillion mark is made on the forehead
Muggu: Muggu is pattern drawn on the threshold with rice flour to protect the house from evil eye.

Translated by: Kallury Syamala
Original: Papineni Shivashankar (పాపినేని శివశంకర్)
Titles of the Original Poems:
1. విశ్వనరుడు
2. వెయ్యి రాత్రుల జ్వాల
4. బొట్టుతో బాటు
(‘ఒక ఖడ్గం ఒక పుష్పం’ అనే సంకలనంలోంచి)

Dream after dream
Girl for a boy and boy for a girl
Dream of turning into dollar trees, hugging tightly.
Once things of pride, these migrations,
Now ‘trishankous’ that swing the parents slowly
Into a lonely old age that twists their insides
They clutch their computers to their laps…
Hoping maybe one day…
One day it will shed one tear drop for them
On its own.
Or enjoy the touch of their loving hand
They live on cheating themselves
And start learning to walk afresh.

Original: Smt. Aduri Satyavathi Devi (Telugu)
Translated by: Syamala Kallury

When it rains sunshine
The tree is full of
Showers, green!

When it rains darkness
The tree is full
Dark clouds!

When there is a breeze
The tree rains
The cloud shower!

The Cosmic Form, Viswaroopam

Moon like Vamana[1]
Plants its moonlit feet
On the sky and the earth!

I offer him
My heart for the
Third foot!
Now
I must humble myself
Into the secret
Inner worlds within
To manifest as poetry!

A Dark Night

Dark night more beautiful
than a moonlit night,
In the river moonshine
The eyes perch themselves
In a moon boat, always

In the darkness
They play, jumping around,
On starry sand-fields!

Two Words

If blessed with a boy
I would have become a father.
Now with daughter
I became a mother!

How can I curse any woman
To equal a man!
I will bless everyman
To match a woman, instead!

God and the Baby

The baby smiles, in sleep
Mother says:
God is talking to her, in sleep!
The Planted Cloud

When it rains sunshine
The tree is full of
Showers, green!

When it rains darkness
The tree is full
Dark clouds!

When there is a breeze
The tree rains
The cloud shower!

The Cosmic Form, Viswaroopam

Moon like Vamana[1]
Plants its moonlit feet
On the sky and the earth!

I offer him
My heart for the
Third foot!
Now
I must humble myself
Into the secret
Inner worlds within
To manifest as poetry!

A Dark Night

Dark night more beautiful
than a moonlit night,
In the river moonshine
The eyes perch themselves
In a moon boat, always

In the darkness
They play, jumping around,
On starry sand-fields!

Two Words

If blessed with a boy
I would have become a father.
Now with daughter
I became a mother!

How can I curse any woman
To equal a man!
I will bless everyman
To match a woman, instead!

God and the Baby

The baby smiles, in sleep
Mother says:
God is talking to her, in sleep!
We don’t have a God

But the idea of God
Rests on his not being there
In any form!

We are so full of clouds
Colours, lightening, thunders,
and showers
We shower around
We don’t have a God!

But still
Why wonder if
God, there in not being there,
Speaks to a baby, a sky
Clear as the crystal!

Different Worlds

Man is one world

Strength-weakness
Light – Darkness
One combination for one world

Every world has its
Flowers and deserts.
Three fourth of every world
Is ocean and salt water.

Perhaps in every world
There is a sky, infinite
Unknown to us, hidden!

A Race That is Question Mark

What else is more abnormal,
On earth other than man?

What else is more
Horrible on earth than
A man who hurts
The earth, the ozone,
Or human heart
And feels proud of it!

What else is more
Pitiable on earth than
A man who cannot unfold
Like a flower
Like the first ray of dawn,
Like laughter!

What else can be more
Unnatural than
A man who cannot become
One with the mountains
The valleys, the trees and
Its varieties amidst
Innumerable lives around us!

[1] As Vamana, the short One he sent the demon king Bali to the netherworld. The king Bali was known for his generosity and the Lord, as Vamana, enters his sacred Yaga site and asks for three feet of ground. When he agrees Vamana grows in size and occupies the heavens with one foot, earth with the other foot, and asks the king for place to put the third foot. Helpless, the king offers him his own head and Vamana pushes him into the nether worlds. He also blesses him and gives him a boon by telling him that he would guard his palace in the nether worlds.

Original: (Telugu) Nene Ee Kshanam by B.V.V Prasad
Translation: Syamala Kallury

Link to original poems: http://www.newaavakaaya.com/Short-Stories-Poetry-Essays/ebooks-nene-ee-kshanam-bvv-prasad.html

2.
When my mother’s stories
Turned into midnight dreams
When formless fantasies
Turned into wandering butterflies
On the days when leaving paper boats
Drenching in pouring rain
We invited scoldings
When we ran after the shrubs
Chasing bees
When screaming we flew bitten by
Honey bees for poking their hive
Clay toys, doll games, petty fights
Those days that never return
Yet longing never ceases
For these are my real friends!

3.
When we enter our
Friendship garden of yester years
Shrubs welcome,
Wee breeze greets,
Tiny flower chats
Every branch asks after our welfare!
Only the pathway you walked away from
Mocks, mercilessly!

4.
When I hit her womb hard with my fists
Mother felt joy, gave life to ‘I’ in me
When I rode on her [...]]]> 1.
In the twilight of life
If you can see
When you turn back
one friend who stood for you
One memory which haunted you
One friend or one memory
If you have, you have not lived in vain

2.
When my mother’s stories
Turned into midnight dreams
When formless fantasies
Turned into wandering butterflies
On the days when leaving paper boats
Drenching in pouring rain
We invited scoldings
When we ran after the shrubs
Chasing bees
When screaming we flew bitten by
Honey bees for poking their hive
Clay toys, doll games, petty fights
Those days that never return
Yet longing never ceases
For these are my real friends!

3.
When we enter our
Friendship garden of yester years
Shrubs welcome,
Wee breeze greets,
Tiny flower chats
Every branch asks after our welfare!
Only the pathway you walked away from
Mocks, mercilessly!

4.
When I hit her womb hard with my fists
Mother felt joy, gave life to ‘I’ in me
When I rode on her back crushing her
Mother laughed, sharing her laughter with me-
When I refused to go to school
She pleaded, explaining the meaning of life!
When acts I indulged in
Destroying her peace of mind
She bore with patience lighting me-
When I flew away growing wings of my own
She proud of me, stayed back in her own den.
Mother is ‘creation’, mother is ‘patience’
Mother is ‘love’, Mother is ‘amma’

Original: Kiranprabha (Telugu)
Translated By: Kallury Syamala

Kiranprabha has been writing poetry ever since his student days. He established himself as a poet and earned a lot of readership for the innovative genre, photo-poetry, he started in 1984 in Pallaki. He published more than four hundred of these photo-poems in almost all the magazines of the day. He was the founder editor of Sujanaranjani between 2003 and 2006. He is currently engaged in his own web journal Koumudi and has been successfully floating this magazine for the readers in India and abroad since 2007.
For the last two years he has been conducting talk shows for various radio channels. Brevity, clarity and rhythmic expression of ideas that most his readers can relate to are the hallmarks of his success.

The muse too sheds tears.
Not just one’s body, but the
Nation as a whole shivers!

2

The sorrow of many a mother
The slok that no Valmiki could ever write.
The epic that needs to be written now
Is not Ramayanam but a ‘Bomb’ayanam!

3

The fire has swallowed the lips
Even before the lover has ever attempted to kiss
If one wants entwine the loved one in a snake’s hug
In secrecy, the legs lay severed!

4

The sons have come, their city dreams
In the lightless eyes of parents fill moonshine!
The parents now like candles
Before their limbless children, in hospitals!

5

The three billion gods they worship with their offerings
do not create half a drop of blood, to save!
Far better to have four humans
In each village who can give blood, instead!

6

This tender face wherein blood curdled,
The head, like a thorny crown
With nails adorned by the bomb
Who is this young Jesus, which sin has he befriended?

7

Masjid did not say a word looking at the
Flesh of the [...]]]> 1

The muse too sheds tears.
Not just one’s body, but the
Nation as a whole shivers!

2

The sorrow of many a mother
The slok that no Valmiki could ever write.
The epic that needs to be written now
Is not Ramayanam but a ‘Bomb’ayanam!

3

The fire has swallowed the lips
Even before the lover has ever attempted to kiss
If one wants entwine the loved one in a snake’s hug
In secrecy, the legs lay severed!

4

The sons have come, their city dreams
In the lightless eyes of parents fill moonshine!
The parents now like candles
Before their limbless children, in hospitals!

5

The three billion gods they worship with their offerings
do not create half a drop of blood, to save!
Far better to have four humans
In each village who can give blood, instead!

6

This tender face wherein blood curdled,
The head, like a thorny crown
With nails adorned by the bomb
Who is this young Jesus, which sin has he befriended?

7

Masjid did not say a word looking at the
Flesh of the bleeding swans
Jesus has not saved
Sheshayya has not done anything!
The babas immobile, bound by the gods carved in stone
Only a man can save another now!
The bodies drenched in blood
Whatever they were called,
Their mutilated bodies
Now have to be buried or burnt
What else can be a better tribute?

9

Let them kill any number
Till the ones who mastermind the killings
And the ones who kill
Are tired sick of this
We will resolves ourselves to die!

Original poem: Yendluri Sudhakar
Translation: Kallury Syamala

One memory gone astray
Is by this girl, brought ashore.
One valuable experience lost
In the darkroom called ‘past’
Is by her, with infinite patience, retrieved.

Those who have turned to ashes
And mingled with water
Have come back, through her milky cheeks,
To greet again!

Those who froze in time as still pictures
Of the photo frames
In her eyes, have come to life again.

Her small body houses
Layers and layers of memories
Of people, now dead and gone
She is like a little book of autograph
With all their signatures, inscribed.

The smile on her tender lips that defies description
Must be a stamp of approval for
This continuity they have gained, from them.
The closed fist must have a hidden message
From them that cannot be deciphered.

2. Summer Rain
———————-

This evening turns a scorching day
Into a soothing shower
The earth’s fragrance more beautiful
Than that of the jasmines intoxicates the mind.
Looks like a volcano has suddenly
Changed its mind
And turned into a snow [...]]]> 1. Resemblances
———————-

One memory gone astray
Is by this girl, brought ashore.
One valuable experience lost
In the darkroom called ‘past’
Is by her, with infinite patience, retrieved.

Those who have turned to ashes
And mingled with water
Have come back, through her milky cheeks,
To greet again!

Those who froze in time as still pictures
Of the photo frames
In her eyes, have come to life again.

Her small body houses
Layers and layers of memories
Of people, now dead and gone
She is like a little book of autograph
With all their signatures, inscribed.

The smile on her tender lips that defies description
Must be a stamp of approval for
This continuity they have gained, from them.
The closed fist must have a hidden message
From them that cannot be deciphered.

2. Summer Rain
———————-

This evening turns a scorching day
Into a soothing shower
The earth’s fragrance more beautiful
Than that of the jasmines intoxicates the mind.
Looks like a volcano has suddenly
Changed its mind
And turned into a snow mountain
The umbrella cloud that
Sheltered us from the bright sun
Could not save itself and turned
Into a sieve, dripping!
The body wet with the sweat
Of the day’s heat, suddenly
Drenches itself in this rain, how nice!
The fan inside its wings revolving round and round
Has given up declaring ‘Can no longer save you from the heat’
The cool breeze then drifts in sprinkling
Its holy water, lo,
The whole village turns into an AC
One never knows who will be kind at what time
One never knows who can breathe life into a dead flute
I thought I had dried up with tiredness
Yet, surprisingly, my hopes rekindle
With just four drops of rain.

Telugu: Vinnakota Ravi Sankar (Vesavi Vaana)
Translated By: Kallury Syamala