Manju Mannu Mauna, poems by Ted Kooser
Translated by H.S. Raghavendra Rao, Abhinava, Rs. 75
Ted Kooser, one of the American poets who began writing poetry in the latter part of the 20 century, was chosen as the US Poet Laureate in 2004. As a poet, he is different from American poets like Eliot and Auden. His poetry is not weighed down either by a particular ideology or a particular philosophy. His poetry is addressed to the common man and attempts, with concrete details, to capture the scenes and incidents of the daily life of peasants and ordinary workers. In one of his poems (the first one in the translations), he says that his readers should be those who cannot afford to buy his book.
H. S. Raghavendra Rao, the noted Kannada critic-translator, has selected and translated 60 poems from the collection, Flying At Night: Poems 1965-1985, and has published them under the title, Manju Mannu Mauna . Most of the poems in this collection depict farmers, old age and loneliness, dried up rivers, and common people eking out a living.
Among the many poems about farmers, one is “ raita kattisida mane” (‘Tom Ball’s Barn’). The poem depicts a dilapidated house built with the help of a bank loan, enough to build it, but not enough to paint it. By the time the loan is cleared through years, the house crumbles. The bank-manager is dead but not the ‘deaf’ bank or the loan. In a crumbling barn, suffering from diabetes, the farmer dies, along with the dying house. Another poem, “ Negila Gurutu” (‘Tillage Marks’) describes a huge rock which carries marks of the ploughshare used by generations of farmers; and it ends with the line: “ aa raitaralli pratiyobbanu andukomdidda / ee bhumi tannadendu” (‘. . . every single farmer thought/ that the land belonged to him’). Yet another poem, “ Paalubidda farm house” (‘Abandoned Farmhouse’), talks about a farmhouse which contains enough signs of a well-built farmer having lived there once with his wife and child. But today, it is deserted and the poem ends with these lines: “ ‘ eno anaahuta aagirabeku.’ / aagirale beku” (‘A disaster has occurred.’/ It surely has.). There cannot be a more chilling comment on the national policies vis-à-vis farmers either in Karnataka or elsewhere, today.
Kooser’s poetic world is peopled by many old men, old aunts and old uncles. One such poem is “ Weekend koneyalli” (‘At the End of the Weekend’). The lonely narrator of the poem, suddenly, during a weekend thinks of his son some 300 miles away from him, probably working in Air Force (or a son playing with a cardboard plane). The narrator wonders if his son, flying above his house, would dip the wings so that he could see the house and him sitting inside. Then he questions himself whether the ‘flash / that I dream is his thought of me.’ If we change 300 miles to 30,000 miles, the poem is about most of the old parents in Karnataka or elsewhere in India, whose children are away in the US or England, leaving their parents to dream of them, all by themselves.
One of the most moving poems is “Fort Robinson.” Fort Robinson in Northern Nebraska has a dark past. While relocating the native ‘red Indians’ (American Indians), some fleeing men of the Cheyenne tribe are put in the prison and starved. Thirty people among them are shot dead by the American army. But the narrator, who has gone there on a trip, describes throughout how the guards there climb up one tree after another and kill magpies. When the young birds fall down, they are beaten to death. The poem’s last lines are: “ . . . we drove away, into those ragged buttes / the Cheyenne climbed that winter, fleeing.” In order to avoid sentimentality, Kooser , talks about the massacre of magpies, alludes to the massacre of the red Indians, and leaves the rest to the readers.
Successful translation results when the translator and the original writer (as in this case) share similar views about language, poetry and society. In the beginning, HSR gives a brief, but useful introduction to the original poet, and notes when absolutely necessary. His choice of poems is excellent, and the kind of casual and conversational Kannada he uses reflects the kind of English Kooser uses. Each one of the poems in this collection is about ‘us and ourselves,’ and HSR deserves our congratulations on introducing a different kind of poetry to Kannada.
