Today December 1 2012 is 103rd Birth Anniversary of Marathi poet B S Mardhekar (बा. सी. मर्ढेकर). I know he isn't the best but he comes more easily to my lips than Tukaram and Dnyaneshwar!
Nathan Helle:
"Imagine a world in which good manners and the beau ideal
trump all, and you have basically imagined the mood of 21st-century American
life. New Yorkers once carried mace; now we sit at home in cardigans and pickle
cabbage. Angry young men while away quiet hours playing Angry Birds. The big
song of this summer—“Call Me Maybe”—was light, reserved, and deeply polite. ("Here's my number/ So call me, maybe?") How, exactly, did we get here from “You Shook Me
All Night Long”?"
Artist: Sam Gross, The New Yorker
Poem no# 21 from "Mardhekarnchi Kavita" (मर्ढेकरांची कविता), 1959
"पिपांत मेले ओल्या उंदिर;
माना पडल्या, मुरगळल्याविण;
ओठांवरती ओठ मिळाले;
माना पडल्या, आसक्तीविण.
गरिब बिचारे बिळांत जगले,
पिपांत मेले उचकी देउन;
दिवस सांडला घाऱ्या डोळीं
गात्रलिंग अन् धुवून घेउन.
जगायची पण सक्ती आहे;
मरायची पण सक्ती आहे.
उदासतेला जहरी डोळे,
काचेचे पण;
मधाळ पोळें
ओठांवरती जमलें तेंही
बेकलाइटी, बेकलाइटी!
ओठांवरती ओठ लागले;
पिपांत उंदिर न्हाले ! न्हाले !"
Translated by Vilas Sarang (विलास सारंग):
"Mice Died in the Wet Barrel
Inside the waterlogged drum, the mice are dead,
Their necks hang, wrung by nobody.
The necks hang, and lips meet lips
Without desire.
Poor bastards lived in holes,
And, with a hiccup, died in the drum.
Day spilled into gray eyes,
rinsed their limbs and genitals.
Living is obligatory;
so, too, is dying.
Melancholy has disquieting eyes;
they are glass ones, though.
Even the honeycomb
brimming on their lips
is merely foam rubber!
Lips nuzzling lips:
O the mice are douched in the drum!
the mice are douched!"
(कृपया लक्षात घ्या कार्टूनिस्टनी काढलेत मांजर आणि मी ते धरलेत उंदीर!)