I

Hunger

By Namdeo Dhasal

 

Hunger

 

Hunger

Unable to do this ione thing  and able

To solve or not solve theorems

Will hunger –fires forge a poem?

Will music die in the fire of hunger?

How difficult music is

To him who cannot count the best of his own pulse.

Who hadn’t thought that fees couldn’t be claimed

For singing songs of hunger.

Hunger

A fruitless thing

However hard you work

The reward is still stones

If stones cannot build a house

We’ll not manage to live in it.

Hunger you are mouse, cat, lion in turn

How long can mere mortals like us stand

I this game that you’ve set up?

 

2.

 

Hunger

a shrewd peace is growing everywhere

this is the beginning of our new life sentence

hunger forgive us that we cannot cut the tree of time

but even cut, the sky will still be blue.

To which market can we carry dumb hearts?

Where auction them

Where day sweeps life

Who will buy crushed hearts

Who will profit by the deal?

Hunger, tell us your game, your strategy

If we can muster guts enough

We’ll fight you to the finish

Can’t crawl and grovel on our stomachs

Too long with you

How much can we wash the grime off hunger?

How much wash the dust off years?

How much scorn to the very ends of scorn?

Hunger, if a bridge of iron will not join you to us

Then let us fly free like unfettered birds

Hunger, your land , the thorns upon your land,

Fester in the brain all night

Till the brain itself freezes.

Hunger, when a thing is taken from the fridge

Is it still fresh?

Hunger your every blood drop is cold

Your every blood drop is mute

Order, let lightening course through the guts

Order, let life get charged

Wounded seas and the long moans of our demands

Hunger, say yes to our dreams

Don’t snuff out the orphan huts upon the shore

We’ll see later

The gold-threaded struggle

Between the snail of pain and the sea.

 

3.

 

Hunger

we have made our demand

let you need us

will we never grow?

Let us grow

The sun may blithely have forgotten dawn

The river may blithely have forgotten time

We wanted more from light

Than mere life

But light turned false.

Hunger,

We will not allow a column of cloud to stand,

Indifferent, to our door

How much more can we thank

Pain the music in pain

If we have not made ourselves a tidy life

What right do we have to quarrel with the flowers?

How much can we excite pain

How much can we burn

How much can we catch the fire that burns forever?

If our words find no expression

In this stream of sun

We’ll salute you like defeated soldiers

Whoever said that every soldier in the army

Fights like a man?

 

4.

Hunger,

There’s not a single grain in our house today

not a single clever brain in our house today

hunger

if one sings till the last light of the innermost being

will it turn off hunger-light?

Hunger if one takes care of you now

Will it darken?

Hunger, your style is your own

No other calamity comes our way

But you.

Hunger, if we cannot mate you

Cannot impregnate you

Our tribe will have to kill itself

Hunger we have all the aces

Why talk of the songs of the half-sexed jacks?

Here’s our manhood before you now,

Let’s see who wins this round

You or we.

 

5.

 

Hunger

which came first, seed or tree?

Hunger you make things too difficult

Hunger just tell us what breed this monkey is

And if you can’t

Then we will screw

Seventeen generations of you

Hunger, you and your mother..

 

 

Translated by Shanta Gokhale