Vandana Tete, "Revolutionaries"
Original poem here
Editor's note: See the author's Outlook India article for more on her use of "Nobels"; 1992 and 2002 are years when India experienced episodes of horrific communal violence.
Revolutionaries
are suffering from diabetes
Poets live on government ‘Nobels’
Farmers died in banks
Workers in the liquor store
Died in the womb itself
All the women of the world
attained Dalit Buddhahood
Tribal people of the forests
lie on the beds of protected sanctuaries
Truly,
this is not the era of Kalinga
Nor is it the medieval, barbaric India
of 1992 or 2002
A sponsored king,
with teeth hidden in his intestines,
smiles and says every day:
"India is far ahead of the moon."
Translation assisted by ChatGPT.
The word "sponsored" is transliterated in Hindi