The original Kannada poem by Gopalakrishna Adiga was first published in 1954.
Birth:
On the bottom rung of the mountain slopes
roll, roll only thrice, to reach the oil cauldron of the boiling sea.
She waved coconut fronds and beckoned with her hands
and shook for me the rattle of the areca bunch.
She sat at the turning center of the sugarcane press
and bequeathed the eternal downpour of the heartbeat.
With paddy, wheat, ragi and corn,
out of winnowing fans she fed me a song of the flesh.
She laid me down on a hill-top of fragrances, of jasmine, bell-flowers and jaji.
She rinsed me in the sweetness of birdvoices and bee-sounds.
To the apocalypse of the cloud in the sky
she joined below the flames of life.
Early Youth:
In the coppice, under each tree, thick with fruit, shooting seedlings,
groaning and laughter.
In the nooks and heights touched by the magic wand of rain
the earth is all seedling, sprout, plant, tree, grass.
To the garden flower, all over the body are the narcotic lights of the rainbow;
play and noise.
The bee with clinking ankle bells danced, pressing the flower-cup to his lips.
I, the deep-sea diver, plunged deep deep down from where I sat in the back-yard.
As the gree waves lashed and threw up foam,
a storm pounded
and thunder clapped;
I, blinded by the light of undersea pearls
searched till sunset.
Though the lips were plucked from the toddy pot, imagination
was still looking for the source of the spring.
On the fence, all round the paddy fields, in the garden, in every inch of the woods,
maternity was everywhere: pangs, laughter, pain;
the beauty of the stump flowering, screams and laughter:
nurses and doctors all over the nursing home,
four men always behind their back;
in the cradle shops bamboo is quite cheap;
this priest of the birth-rites is expert at death-rites too.
Crowds of young things played in the mud,
slid down and crawled on the slippery bark,
beat their wings in the zero-streets;
clapped and danced in the sewers.
Parasites, leeches feeding even on mushroom corpses
Spawned by the burning midday sun.
A thirst for light in the morning:
the sheen of the hood-pearl of Kalindi in the depths of the Yamuna.
Every door had eyes, windows had eyes, home was eyes,
the town, the woods were all eyes.
The child-like camera eye was turning, throwing
muslin curtains on dark-room walls rammed with reel after reel.
In the roaring of the serial waves at the estuary of Inner and Outer
are pearls, gold, emerald, opal, reds and yellows.
Whereever you fall the magic that binds the cobra;
Agastya`s restless itch on the lips.
If you open your eyes, the screeching of many colours--
earfuls of green, white, yellow and red.
Like a cat with a smear of ghee on the brow, I,
I went round and round, tail erect in a topspin.
She clasped me to her heart;
in love, more than a mother;
she put me in her womb again and again
and pined for me;
she sang a lullaby breaking the neck of a bird,
she beheaded a plant and fed me snacks.
In the loving embrace of Dhrtarashtra, Bhima crumbled;
but nowhere could I see Krishna`s protection.
My legs are rooted in her heart. I tried in vain
to bluff my way to the kingdom of the stars.
Like a eunuch I searched for the endless last road in the sewer of my mind.
I am smeared with the dark sin of Oedipus;
I rode a tractor; I ploughed and harrowed;
I sowed and raised atom-bomb grains;
garnering a harvest of deadly germs, I rejoiced.
The birds of the sky call me again and again;
sixty summons to the court of winds.
The ghouls rumour around my ears, and torment me in whispers again and again.
As the drone of the magician`s evil spells grew louder
I got mad at myself;
I dashed against the pillars and the ceiling of the cage;
Screamed and beat my wings, plucked out my feathers and
piled them up on my breakfast china.
II
The young colt neighed and danced: all around were hay and grain;
a gold bit in the mouth, and reins of diamond;
on the head a gaudy tricolored feather;
behind him, the clatter of a screeching horse-cart.
The harvest dance goes on till the back is broken;
but then--
'The body is heavy, the mind is heavy.'
'Monkey, monkey, show them how a new bride goes to her mother-in-law's.'
'Brother, the only refuge is the Lord at Tirupati.'
'Our mother, the palm tree mother, shows heaven to those who pay.'
Vedas, the manuals, mythologies, hymns, the reciter's legends, and offerings of worship--
the wick-making in front of a broken lamp with the oil running out.
Even then this mother does not leave us:
she grates the heart-shell
over red-pepper smoke.
When you leave at last on the bamboo palanquin, she doesn't come out--
she is in labour again.
III
In the enchanted lacquer palace of mother earth
the memory of Hastinapura did not catch fire.
Whether it is the creation of Maya or of Suyodhna,
one need not worry till the match is struck.
I enjoyed myself there; I slid on the smooth floor
from the outer yard to the darkness of the inner yard.
''I said, 'Who stands there, Mother?'
'Mother?' 'What illusion.' Pass, you fool.' '
'Chandi, Chamundi, tell me what you want?'
'Are you man enough to sacrifice me?'
Who flung her womb in the gutter?
Who is this divine flirt with a false pregnancy?
Karna floated over the Ganga and became Radheya.
Kunti will not come except to kill.
This woman's body is th ecemetery of the maternity home;
she is auto-sexual, loves to masturbate.
Tigers, cheetahs, elephants, cows, goats, monkeys, donkeys,
rose-apple and mango, the jack, the wild jali and jasmine--
these are her natural progeny.
But why did she become suddenly hetero-sexual just when I, misshapen demon, arrived?
They left me blind-folded in the woods.
All around they tightened the barbed wire.
Brine to drink; a piece of fire to eat;
they chained me hand and foot so that I could dance:
I am the guest; six friends came to host me.
A burning candle: all around a candle-wax hill, a stream:
at last, even the wick is cinders, cinders.
Mother earth is stp-mother.
Suruchi to Uttanapada: to Dhruva, the pole star,
the path to the skies is only through the woods.
The silent chant of the Forest dwellers is the open raod.
Take all this wardrobe you gave:
this coat, this shirt, these trousers.
Even this broken hut is yours.
Here you can`t find Space unless you strip to the skin.
Or else I cannot walk erect with my equals on the road.
Unless it is naked, how can the sword carve out and throw away
the invisible armour, the ear-rings and the nectar-pot in the heart?
IV
Visvamitra said: "Trisanku, go to heaven."
The leather-bat, hanging like loose bark on a tree.
It`s rough, the scene they make in the sky-cage among golden threads,
no less than pulling out a leg sunk in the mire.
The mire is foul: the placenta
rots at birth and shrouds a child`s games with epilepsy.
Mud--it would be something if this was only a clay doll--
but even in this doll, the trick of breath.
Beyond this trick, the pure chant of light, a conspiracy.
The air is a road with no footprints.
Look here, this is hard:
if dust goes to dust
air to air
sound to wind
space to space
why should it bother?
still, something remains:
an electric nerve--
new from beyond the stars and the nebulae;
the horrid shape that rises from within the nether world.
A cleverness which joins one to another and makes them dance.
Some say--"We don't know where the switch is."
Some say--"We have forgotten the address of the main office."
The rest say--"It is somewhere here."
In darkness, on the narrow blind alley
one has to crawl fumbling for the wall.
The blind man rides astraddle on the lame.
We have to wait and see how it goes on the road.
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