Hemant Divate [India]

 

How much love

 
Sometimes you ask me
How much I love you
I tell you honestly
I love you as much
As I love myself
 
This upsets you
You want my love for you
To be greater than my love for myself
 
You want to live your life in fiction
I prefer to live in poetry
That’s the only difference
Between the way we love
 
 
I’m unable to leave this city
 
1. 
A keen line of poetry troubles me like water
She has travelled with me from the village to the city
Here, sometimes she supports me, sometimes I support her.
 
Thanks to her
I never got bogged down by the garbage of my ego
She always looked after me as if I were
A pure, clean, innocent child
Expecting nothing in return
 
2. 
In every city I was able to live like a human being
I was able to comprehend that every city is one long poem
 
While a half-done line or a stray word
Can be given to us by some unknown city
 
Which is why before you arrive in that unknown city,
Know this—
You cannot leave without repaying what you owe it
 
3. 
Cities are poetic
They have rhythm
We write poetry to their beat
Like shops beckoning us from afar
Like romping girls and boys
Like people stopping to give directions to strangers
 
And most importantly
As long as there are poets who do their damnedest
To cross the city, from end to end,
Just to read a single poem,
This city will be worth living in
 
 
Death of a poet
 
These days,
poems have begun reeking of the death of language
But they cannot smell their own deaths
 
Even in dying, poems
Can enrich a life
 
Never have I heard of anyone dying
While reading or writing poetry.
 
O, Lord of Poetry,
Let a bullet enter my head
While I’m reading poetry
If I’m the only one going to die
Let a bomb explode while I’m writing poetry
Who else could be as blessed as I
To die peacefully in the act of writing poetry?
 
And as I keep reading poetry, just poetry,
Let both the darkness and the light
Be snuffed out.
 
 
We are cursed to keep speaking
 
Speak, self-styled poet, speak!
Keep speaking to these cacodaemons
 Or you’ll never be free of them
 
Look, it’s something o’clock or the other
The poison of religion stretches to infinity
Out in the street, holy men everywhere
Lie crouching in wait for us
 
In our minds, at least
Let us come together and crush them
In the darkness let there be nothing
But tremors
 
The poet’s job is to show the way
To the crowd that cannot be seen
In the blinding dark found locked
Inside a puzzle in stories that have
Rotted away
 
What say, should I speak
To those who listen but do not hear?
Keep speaking
You have to keep at it!
 
The deaf, the dumb and the blind
The bhakts, who herd like cattle
You have to keep telling them
Until the blinkers fall away from their eyes
At some point, what we say will be of use
And anyway, other than us, who else will speak?
Let the smoke of truth rise
Let the deaf regain their sight
Let the blind grow ears
Let the mute sneeze
Through the stubs of their useless navels
Let the trash be emptied
From their minds
 
Until the blind can see clearly
Until the deaf can hear clearly
Until the mute can scream
The telling should not stop
 
The job of the poet
Is to keep speaking
We are cursed to speak
 
(Translated from the Marathi by Mustansir Dalvi)
 
 
Author’s Bionote:
 
*Hemant Divate is a poet, editor, publisher, translator and adman. He is the author of eight poetry collections in Marathi. His most recent book in Marathi is “Paranoia”, which was awarded the Government of Maharashtra’s Kavi Keshavsut Award. Divate’s poems have been translated into more than 40 international languages. In translation, he has books in Spanish, Irish, Arabic, German, Estonian, and Kannada, in addition to five in English. His poems figure in numerous anthologies in Marathi, English and Slovenian. He is the founder and editor of the Marathi literary magazine “Abhidha Nantar”. “AbhidhaNantar” has been credited with providing a solid platform for new poets and enriching the post-nineties Marathi literary scene. Divate is credited with changing the Marathi literary scene through “AbhidhaNantar” and the Indian English poetry scene through his imprint Poetrywala. Divate has participated in numerous international poetry and literary festivals worldwide. His publishing house, Paperwall Publishing, has published (under its imprint Poetrywala) more than 200 poetry collections.  Hemant Divate is the founder and director of the Mumbai Poetry Festival. He lives in Mumbai, India.

(Photo by Dirk Skiba)