Metropolis (महानगर)

Jungle

Words lost
Tones lost
Expressions lost
Meanings lost
only here
in this jungle.

(Translation from original Marathi by the author)

अरण्य

शब्द हरवले
सूर हरवले
मुद्रा हरवल्या
अर्थ हरवले
इथेच
या अरण्यात

रेमीजीयस डिसोजा
(११-१२-१९६९)


~~~~~~~~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

My possessions of rags

My possessions of rags

Acacia’s yellow hot
Thorny shadows
Tear at
My possessions of rags
Preserved through ages
Of walk.

* * *

While wandering for several years around present Lothal (the remains of Indus Civilisation) I realised: the land here turns ceaseless into desert; it is not restored even in the so-called advanced Twentieth Century!

Though I take keen interest in archaeology I never visited Lothal. What is the point in boasting about the bygone past!

We have heard a story: Emperor Nero was playing fiddle when Rome was burning. Mighty Roman Empire and the Civilisation vanished.

During my childhood I had read a Marathi story about wrestlers. In the climax, it mentions, “the strength of the mighty is also their weakest point”.

Industrial Civilisation, nurtured by the capitalist global corporate society, too, is falling headlong.

I intend to post on the present hot topics at leisure:
1. Global meltdown, and
2. Terror.

~~~~~

© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved।

Gandhism (गांधीवाद) Marathi Poem

Gandhism

Gandhiji wore loincloth of Khadi
We patronise marketed Khadi
That’s our limit of Gandhism –
Don’t shed crocodile’s tears.

(Dedicated to Democratic India, where Gandhiji appears only on the currency. His concept of Panchayati Raj - Rule by the Village - has remained only as concept, to be used in the scholarly discourses.)
October 2, 2008
(Translated from the original by the author)
------------------------
गांधीवाद

गांधीजी पंचा नेसत होते.
आम्ही बाजारू खादी नेसतो.
ही आमची गांधीवादाची मर्यादा --
नक्राश्रू ढाळू नकोस.

~~~~~~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Tata's Nano car (Modern Haiku)

Tata's Nano car (Modern Haiku)

Behind your car
I am dragged –
fallen leaves.

(For a farmer even fallen leaves are precious. They burn them to keep warm. It is used as (compost) manure. But in modern India (call her Bharat or Hindustan) modern maharajas – the corporate – like Tatas – have emerged. What value do they have for - whether farmers or fallen leaves? Read more)
(Translation by the author)
-----
पाचोळा ( आधुनिक हायकू)

तुझ्या मोटारीच्या मागे मागे
येई मी फ़रफ़टत ....
पाचोळा।

(शेताकरयाला पाचोळा फार मोलाचा असतो। त्याची शेकोटी होते। त्याचे शेतासाठी (कम्पोस्ट) खत होते। पण आधुनिक इन्डियात [वाटल्यास भारत म्हणा किंवा हिन्दुस्तान म्हणा] टाटा सारखे आधुनिक राजे महाराजे तयार झाले आहेत। शेतकरी की पाचोळा, त्यांची त्याना काय किंमत ? पुढे वाचा )

२४.८.२००८
~~~~~~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

God's acre

-----------------------------------

God’s acre

When I was born someone smiled –
a dew drop on a tender blade of grass
draped in rainbow attire,
a sparrow picked a grain and flew.

From morning always moves to dusk
on the pathway walks the Sun, along
hear a call from Goddess Night –
Life hangs until the distance ends.

Remi, if you could cut / graft the roots
of beliefs would the twist between
the ends – Birth and Death –
ever remain the same?

(Translation from original Marathi by the author)

~~~~~~

© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

धरतरी: The Earth (Marathi Poem)

धरतरी
धरतरी झाली माझे माता पिता गुरु.
--- रेमी डिसोजा
गुरु पौर्णिमा १८.७.२००८
~~~~

The Earth

The earth is my mother, father, guru. All incarnations came from and merged with land. The Earth is manifestation of God.

-- Remi de Souza

© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Remi’s Vernacular Tongue

Remi’s Vernacular Tongue

Remi’s one more blog: language is Marathi, or English, but different in Remi’s vernacular tongue.

In a family there may be 10, 5, 3 or 2 persons. Their accents and manners of talk may be, or seem to be, similar, but each one’s vernacular is independent. It’s like finger prints. It’s like out of countless leaves on a tree, each leaf has unique impression of veins on it.

That doesn’t happen with countless cars on a large parking lot though effort is made to bring variety by different colours and designs. It’s the same story with apartment blocks in cities.

But all the mud houses built in a village/s in vernacular style do not fail to enchant us by each one’s uniqueness and their variety.

That’s the fun in the natural variety.

How could the sixty years of wanderings fail to make impression on Remi’s vernacular tongue – words, meanings and sound?

A person who wanders whole his life moves on margin. But his wandering is not like a blinkered buggy horse. Or it’s not like a railway that runs on tracks. Or it’s not like aeroplanes that fly on a drawn line from one point to another. Or he has no obligation caste-religion-class.

His wandering is like honeybee’s dancing journey; her hive too moves with her. His wanderings are like an aborigine moving happily at will in the wilderness.

His wandering that started at the foothill of Western Ghats is yet to fulfil, if alive, in reaching homeland – Gondwana.
~~~~~
Remigius de Souza
21.06.2008
LINK (Remichi Marathi Boli)


© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Pilgrimage

Pilgrimage

My Earth begins here
From the soil below my feet
Wherever when I’m there.

Up ‘n up the vision ascending
Round ‘n round horizons holding
High ‘n high on Himalayas’ cliff.

Here, the ego of rumbling cliff – ocean
Dissolve – evaporate now and then
Vanish in the soil – in the air.

Enough is the warmth in heart
To embrace new horizons;
Expands my selfhood now and then.

Sound bond with the soil holds
Whole Earth in a quarter of a ‘roti’;
Recognition retained in a square foot

Soil below my feet.

* * *
(Translation from the original in Marathi by the author)

I take fantasy flights to the higher world of planets and to the lower world of bacteria in the virtual reality of print and electronic media, and return now and then to Mother Earth and ask her, “Give me a fistful grains of sanity for my survival”, thus says Remi.

Original Marathi Text

* * *
(Translation from the original in Marathi by the author)

Note:
1. “Fistful of grain”: In my native village until fifty years ago there were no beggars. Only the mendicants, ascetics, sadhus came to the households asking for alms. They were offered at least a fistful of grains, no coins. There was not much of currency. Now there is minted and printed currency, and rich as well as poor beggars everywhere.
2. ‘Roti’: is Indian flat bread baked on burnt clay or iron plate, usually concave in shape.
~~~~~~
Remigius de Souza 

Dervish (Poem)

Dervish

While walking his way of seasons-months collected
His tiny fortune; it’s her gift only, their kinship
Like a lotus leaf immersed yet sober.
Every moment, every day/ night nourished on five feeds,

who lost his way, a son of soil broadcasts his fortune in
a jungle, in a desert, on a mirage of sensibility
with untiring hope walks the dervish disowned by destiny,
is forever in bloom the flame of the forest of the wild.

¬¬¬¬
Remigius de Souza
07.03.2007
(Translated from his original in Marathi by the author)


Author's poetry homepage:
http://www.poetsindia.com/poet/Remigius+de+Souza

End of an Era

.

End of an Era

Zero or illusion?
Each time turned back to notice —
Fissured cursed land:
The end of one era nearing.

(Translation by the author from the original Marathi text)