THE RIVER

V. MOHAN PRASAD

Yes, a thousand pardons

Yes, my poems to you hang in Pan Supari shops,

Sell on railway platforms

Along with coloured soda bottles and Supari packets

Yes, strange bed fellows–

Rags for cleaning Pan leaves

Stumps of bidis groaning under booth eels–

But, ‘Black Poetry in white ink’ and

“O Lord, make me even a streetwalker in Montparnasse”

Won’t they shame me into pride and redemption?

Await the redemption

Of these faceless tree trunks,

these stuff’d men–

Until then …..

A thousand pardons, tarry.

(Translated by P. Rama Rao from Telugu)

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