What can Poetry Decide? And how can it decide - ArunJee

Yesterday I spoke on Kumar Mukul's ‘Poetry Decides’ and recited the English translation of some of his poems in a program organized by the poet-writer Dr Vinay Kumar in Patna. The book is the bilingual anthology of Kumar Mukul's selected poems. The English translation and the original Hindi poems have been kept side by side in the book. The translator, Shivam Tomar, has done an excellent job by recreating the poems as separate, independent entities.

Poetry for me is ‘a thing of beauty’ and ‘a joy forever’. I read it for myself, for enjoyment. For the public I do recite or  translate sometimes. But speaking is completely a different ballgame.

A good poem is a unique entity unlike any other. It is created with the help of beautiful words available with the poet. So before you speak you always have dilemmas? Like ‘Have you gone to the depths of the poems? Which words to choose for your speech? Or would they do justice to the poems? And if the answer is no, then you always think it's better to be quiet. More so when the poet is a dear friend of yours. 

I hope you understand now what ifs and buts I must have faced before I spoke on Kumar Mukul's bilingual anthology Poetry Decides yesterday. 

As far as the book is concerned you are first struck by its title. Poetry Decides. The title makes you ponder. What can Poetry Decide? And how can it decide? This leads you to enter the world of the book. You start looking for the answer in its poems. And you find that each poem is an answer to this question. The poet’s answer. Through these poems the poet helps you understand his truths about the topics he touches upon in the poems. The topics like nature and humanity, life and death, politics and society etc. The book covers a wide range of themes. In each poem Kumar Mukul amazes you with his contents and the craft.

I am sharing some of the poems and their extracts below with a little of my contribution too in the form of translation.

In the following poem Poetry Decides what are ‘The Best Letters’. I have picked only one stanza:

The Best Letters

The best letters aren't the ones that are timely received

And read right away but the ones that cause us to leap with joy the entire day, the ones we treasure and keep to ourselves until we read them by the lamplight in the privacy of the evening…

In another poem the poet seeks the help of a child to understand an important feature of Moonlight:

Mounds of moonlight

Looking at the moon

I am unable to decide if

I am happy or sad

 

Irritated

I ask a child standing nearby

Tell me, where is the moon

 

First he looks at his own shadow

Then he points to the sky

After which he indicates towards

The mounds of moonlight

Rising on the earth

 

It is then that I realise that

While talking about the moon

We talk about the things

Immersed in moonlight”

In the title poem the poet reveals the meaning of Poetry beautifully. I am sharing only a few stanzas. The poem is longer.

Poetry decides

Being aware that Poetry

Is not to put oneself in spotlight

But to tell what it's like to be human

In a complete statment through words

 

Would you like to know

What is Poetry that how

While passing through the lips of a beloved

And blooming on the branches of Gulmohar

It completes its journey

To the blood of the man

Splattered on the road

 

Poetry can yield a harvest of bread

It can let an individual emerge in the public

And make the public appear as an individual

In the following the poet exhorts the human beings to cooperate with trees in bearing the weight of the sky. Here trees become the bridge between human beings and the sky:

Sky

Holding the sky up on the top of their twigs

How happy trees seem to be

Let's join them in bearing the weight

And laugh together

So that the sky may rise even higher

Through the poem, Jungle, Kumar Mukul predicts the horrors that we are likely to face due to the pace and direction of the progress in modern civilization:

Jungle

In the wilderness of modern civilization

Some jungles will continue to exist

With their blind-womb cave-like solitude

 

They will survive

Much like a cactus does.