CHANGE
Like those hungry ringworm scars
which have consumed yards of skin.
These forests of concrete too,
have ravaged the earth.
Mutating people into machines
who run amok everywhere they go.
They are like zombies now
Hurrying to crush their last bits of human tissue,
Like scraps of sugarcane
Under the grinder’s teeth
Tenets, truth and ethics
have all charred into ash
For whom has all this changed
For what has all this changed.
Tortured by this relentless change,
Even the wind, rain, seas and mountains
have begun to unleash their fury
as if they too have sensed the end.
In this climate of oppressive change
Man, directionless,
has started digging his own grave
In these forests of concrete
You can no longer see
those springs which ooze with love in their heart.
All that one can see
are zombies running in chaos
on roads they know little about.
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Village
On the day
I left my village home for the city
The springs along the foothills were still murmuring
The swaying coconut trees appeared to hug one another
The lone peepul tree preened its foliage
as it stared into the mirror-like stillness of the temple pond.
The birds had flown down from the trees
to peck at discarded grains of unpolished rice
The farm hands incessantly hummed
songs in praise of the paddy fronds
Kostulo’s mother had just walked into Shankar’s home with
a piece of sweetmeat
The elders of the ward had stepped out
to bid me goodbye
Some tried to say a few words
but could only muster a sob or two.
It was amidst such emotional turmoil,
that I left
With the sights and sounds of my village stored away,
for the city
For the sake of that tiny thing called the stomach.
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After singing paeans about my home, my village
my people, and about old memories for several years
Today, I have returned.
But when I looked around
The peepal tree by the temple
The springs along the foothills
The farms, the farm hands
Kostulo’s mother
My home, my people
none of them were around.
My village had changed and how.
But I still continue to sing the old songs
as I search for my village deep in the depths of
my own eyes.
(Translated by Mayabhushan Nagvenkar)
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Sanjiv Verenkar is a Sahitya Akademi award-winning poet
