With the Yoke You Left Half-way

 అనువాదలహరి.. ఎన్ యెస్ మూర్తి గారి అనువాదంలో నా కవిత..  (నువ్వు వదిలేసిన కాడితో)

With the Yoke You Left Half-way… Vanaja Tatineni, Telugu Poetess

That the necessities were welling up each year

like water in a spring,

and the loans were growing wild with interest

like reed unattended,

you took to liquor once

to drown the grief;

But today you took this “peasanti-cide”

and dropped down dead like a pest.

.

Ever since you merged into the elements

leaving me to twist in the wind;

left me as the lone prop

for the parents who begot you

and for the children we begot

ignoring that I was behind you for everything

from the day our lives were tied together,

I have been spiriting myself each day

to buck up and hang on…

.

The hands that never turned up for help

when you were alive,

have flocked around me ;

and are hovering still,

with looks of hunger like Hawks and Raven

around weak and emaciated;

the sufferings you thought

would cease with your decease

have only thrown us from the pan into the fire.

.

Like the chatter of cicadas at midnight,

harassment of creditors

heart-rending hunger cries of children

and the ‘un-cloakable’ youthful graces

refrain unceasingly;

Fear, want and emptiness

linger in the dried up eyes

like the traces of water in a farm well.

.

To unveil the dawn of sensibility in our people

I must fence the looks converging on me,

put fire into my looks

and stop them in their tracks;

Lugging the yoke you left half-way

I must culture the field of life

to survive

and I continue to survive…

Until I reach the other bank

swimming with the lone hand

I live

and continue to live.

 .

Vanaja Tatineni