A Paean of Joy
JANAMANCHI VENKATRAMAIAH
What have you given me and
What have you taken from me,
O Lord,
You have made a losing bargain!
You have brought this ignorant one, this prankish wastrel,
And you have sold yourself, the desire-fulfilling touch-stone.
For a broken shell I got heaps of wealth,
I have become one without the second in glory;
Even a clod of earth, at the magic touch of
Your mercy, becomes a mountain of gold, with
the sun going round it.
Like the whirl-wind, I went in pride wherever
the wind blew
Today, my strength is broken, my force is
spent, by breath is hot
and I have come to you as to a mother drinking
her milk like a helpless child.
You have come to a poor man’s hut, O Lord!
And, you have brought with you the light of a myriad suns.
Your shadow even, I cannot see
not even that sign that you have come,
You have deceived me cleverly,
You have overwhelmed this hut in a flood of
light.
I lay mute in a corner like a cold clad
Losing all zeal for life;
But now I have become a new man,
And,
Like the kokil
virile, with new songs in my throat
Make them your own, giving them a place
in your book of poetry, in your joy,
O! Little
–Rendering from the
original in Telugu by M. Visweswara Rao