Planted for beauty in the yard
Cactus
To my great surprise spread
Unnoticed
All over the house
Rendering it narrow and
Thwarted the flow off harmonies
Devilish bushes in every corner
Our imagination will be torn
Caught by some thorn
Words will stop moving
Caught in some bush
Mind gets evaporated silently and
Heart remains only as an organ
Silence reigns mechanically.

It’s so narrow
That affection can never penetrated
It’s so narrow
That one longs to escape
In to the field for a breath.
What’s there in a fields ?
Where are the tossing flower plants
Spreading the fragrance of friendship?
Where are the sprawling boughs
That fondly embrace
Except the asoka or the teak
With hands stretched in to the sky
And eyes over the head
Looking down upon the whole world?
When you feel like shedding heart felt tears
Lying on the lawn
There are prickles
To hurt your legs and eyes too.
There are crowds all over the fields
And in the towns too
Making them human forests
Hating the touch of others
Growing thorns all over the bodies—
Human cacti.
Chocking narrowness
In and out of the house
Thoughtless estrangement
Insipid barren lives.
Trying to run away
We’ll be shocked.
We can’t move our legs and fingers.
When we look at our selves
We realize
We are ourselves cacti.

Original: (Telugu) Seela Subhadra Devi
Translated by: Kodavanti Leela Mohan Rao