FELLING OF THE BANYAN TREE BY DILIP CHITRE

FELLING OF THE BANYAN TREE 
DILIP CHITRE

Dilip Chitre (1938–2009) was born in Baroda. He writes poetry both in Marathi and English. Travelling in a Cage, from which the poem selected here has been taken, was published in 1980. Apart from poetry, Chitre has also written short stories and critical essays. An Anthology of Marathi Poetry 1945–1965 is one of his most important works of translation. He sees poetry as an expression of the spirit. He lives and works in Mumbai.

My father told the tenants to leave

Who lived on the houses surrounding our house on the hill

One by one the structures were demolished

Only our own house remained and the trees

Trees are sacred my grandmother used to say

Felling them is a crime but he massacred them all

The sheoga, the oudumber, the neem were all cut down

But the huge banyan tree stood like a problem

Whose roots lay deeper than all our lives

My father ordered it to be removed

The banyan tree was three times as tall as our house

Its trunk had a circumference of fifty feet

Its scraggy aerial roots fell to the ground

From thirty feet or more so first they cut the branches

Sawing them off for seven days and the heap was huge

Insects and birds began to leave the tree

And then they came to its massive trunk

Fifty men with axes chopped and chopped

The great tree revealed its rings of two hundred years

We watched in terror and fascination this slaughter

As a raw mythology revealed to us its age

Soon afterwards we left Baroda for Bombay

Where there are no trees except the one

Which grows and seethes in one’s dreams, its aerial roots

 Looking for the ground to strike.

REFUGEE BLUES BY WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN

REFUGEE BLUES 
WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN

Wystan Hugh Auden (1907–1973) was a student and later a Professor of Poetry at Oxford University. One of the most important poets of the century, he has published several collections of poems noted for their irony, compassion and wit. Although a modern poem, ‘Refugee Blues’ uses the ballad form of narration.

Say this city has ten million souls,

Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:

Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no

place for us.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,

Look in the atlas and you’ll find it there:

We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there

now.

In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,

Every spring it blossoms anew:

Old passports can’t do that, my dear, old passports

can’t do that.

The consul banged the table and said:

‘If you’ve got no passport you’re officially dead’;

But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;

Asked me politely to return next year;

But where shall we go today, my dear, but where shall

we go today?

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said:

‘If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread’;

He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking

of you and me.

Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;

It was Hitler over Europe, saying: ‘they must die’;

We were in his mind, my dear, we were in his mind.

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin;

Saw a door opened and a cat let in:

But they weren’t German Jews, my dear, but they

weren’t German Jews.

Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,

Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:

Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;

They had no politicians and sang at their ease:

They weren’t the human race, my dear, they weren’t

the human race.

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,

A thousand windows and a thousand doors;

Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them

was ours.

Went down to the station to catch the express,

Asked for two tickets to Happiness;

But every coach was full, my dear, every coach was

full.

Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;

Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:

Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.

FOR ELKANA BY NISSIM EZEKIEL

FOR ELKANA 
NISSIM EZEKIEL

Nissim Ezekiel (1924–2004) was born in Mumbai. He is today perhaps the best known Indian poet to have written in English. He had his education at Wilson College, Bombay and later at Birbeck College, London. A professor of American Literature at Bombay University, Ezekiel has written several poems and some plays. A proficient critic, Ezekiel lectured at a number of universities in the U.S.A. and the U.K.

The warm April evening

tempts us to the breezes

sauntering across the lawn.

We drag our chairs down

the stone steps and plant them there.

Unevenly, to sit or rather sprawl

in silence till the words begin to come.

My wife, as is her way,

surveys the scene, comments

on a broken window-pane.

Suggests a thing or two

that every husband in the neighbourhood

knows exactly how to do

except of course the man she loves

who happened to be me.

Unwilling to dispute

the obvious fact.

that she is always right,

I turn towards the more

attractive view that opens up

behind my eyes and shuts her out.

Her voice crawls up and down the lawn,

our son, who is seven,

hears it—and it reminds him of something.

He stands before us,

his small legs well apart,

crescent-moon-like chin uplifted

eyes hard and cold

to speak his truth

in masterly determination:

Mummy, I want my dinner, now.

Wife and husband in unusual rapport

state one unspoken thought:

Children Must be Disciplined.

She looks at me. I look away.

The son is waiting. In another second

he will repeat himself.

Wife wags a finger.

Firmly delivers verdict: Wait.

In five minutes I’ll serve you dinner.

No, says the little one,

not in five minutes, now.

I am hungry.

It occurs to me the boy is like his father.

I love him as I love myself.

Wait, darling, wait,

Mummy says, wait for five minutes

But, I am hungry now,

declaims the little bastard, in five minutes

I won’t be hungry any more.

This argument appeals to me.

Such a logician deserves his dinner straightaway.

My wife’s delightful laughter

holds the three of us together.

We rise and go into the house.

HAWK ROOSTING BY TED HUGHES

HAWK ROOSTING 

TED HUGHES

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) completed his education at Pembroke College, Cambridge. In 1956, he married the poet Sylvia Plath. He tried to make a living in America by teaching and writing. Finally, he returned to England. The most remarkable quality of Hughes’ poems is an intense and obsessive fascination with the world of birds and animals; and though essentially about birds, animals and fishes, his poems shock us with unusual phrases and violent images. The above poem is in the form of a monologue.

HAWK ROOSTING BY TED HUGHES

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes

closed.

Inaction, no falsifying dream

Between my hooked head and hooked

feet:

Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

The convenience of the high trees!

The air’s buoyancy and the sub’s ray

Are of advantage to me;

And the earth’s face upward for my inspection.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.

It took the whole of Creation

To produce my foot, my each feather:

Now I hold Creation in my foot.

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly-

I kill where I please because it is all mine.

There is no sophistry in my body:

My manners are tearing off heads.

The allotment of death.

For the one path of my flight is direct

Through the bones of the living.

No arguments assert my right.

The sun is behind me.

Nothing has changed since I began,

My eye has permitted no change.

I am going to keep things like this.

MOTHER TONGUE BY PADMA SACHDEV

MOTHER TONGUE 
PADMA SACHDEV

Padma Sachdev (born 1940) writes in her mother tongue Dogri and in Hindi. She has received many awards for her poetry, including the Sahitya Academi Award she received at the age of thirty for her first collection of Dogri poems. The above poem, translated from the original Dogri, bemoans the deprivation of Dogri of its native script Sharade, that evolved from the original Brahmi around the time Dogri developed. Once widely used by the people of all religions in the valley, Sharade, for various reasons, came to be replaced by the Persian script. Presently both Persian and Devanagri (Hindi and Urdu) scripts are used for Dogri, a language listed in Schedule VIII of the Constitution of India.

I approached a stem

Swinging on a reed

And asked him

To give me a quill.

Irritated, he said

I gave you one only the other day

A new one, what have you done with it?

Are you some sort of an accountant

With some Shah

Writing account books

Where you need a new pen

Every other day he asked.

No, I don’t work for a Shah

I said, but for a Shahni, very kind,

Very well off

And I am not the only one

Working for her

She has many servants

Ever ready to do her bidding

That Shahni is my mother tongue

Dogri

Give me, a quill, quickly

She must be looking for me

The reed cut off its hand

Gave it to me and said

Take it

I too am her servant.