Bhagiratha’s Bounty and Other poems-27

Bhagiratha’s Bounty and Other poems-27

English Translation: T.S. Chandra Mouli

Telugu Original : Kandukuri Sreeramulu 

27.Marina Beach

Marina beach, Marina beach
how beautiful you are
how many people are cajoled in your lap
and charmed by you,
falling in love with you as we walked to see you
the coach we came by left leaving us here,
that just shows what a seductive beauty you are!
Successive draughts of breeze caress you always
decorating you with necklaces of waves devotedly
hug you warmly and move on.
Glistening at dusk your glow flows as feet of a bower.
How generous you are Marina!
As cruel men pinch and stomp you with their feet
race across you with vengeance,
your tender heart never gets hurt!
Marina! Marina!
When thousands of people walk on you
or happily converse nibbling peanuts
or some savoury snack,
how soothing your warm body to them and cold sea!
As your beauty is pinched
and wounded by riding roughshod,
snuffing fragrance of your cockle-shells,
handling you roughly as they turn you into a cemetery
I am enraged boundless like a sea, Marina!
Are you protecting in your belly carefully
tombs of people’s man Anna Durai and
Tamil brother Ramachandran?
A mother offering life to a new born baby
carrying it in the womb for nine months
may cast away children,
but you keep the departed deposited alive
in your belly, really great you are!
Don’t disquiet of breakers
disturb you internally, Marina?
I was astounded as I looked at sea shore
and its visual gestures of strange voyages.
Initially as I saw you
I felt a refuge in drifting desert was found.
First time I viewed you
what sort of sandy land it was, I felt.
At the outset on seeing you
I thought you were a spouseless solitary camel
but
as I heard your tinkling anklets,
I realised then
you were a commune of countless sonority,
you echoed whispers of hugs of millions of bird pairs,
you were a shelter for aimless wanderers to rest
I actually understood !

*****

(To be continued-)