‘Our shadows drag us back’: Poems by 2024 Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar winner Ramesh Karthik Nayak

Butterflies

Cursed witches
possess the life of butterflies –
colour-dust of each flower
alight on papery wings.

Butterflies – some buzz aflutter
while some suckle nectar.

An emptiness occupies eyes,
hearts melt on petals.

The darkness of lust
seduces colours on wings.

Vagrant glances pin down butterflies
onto the pyre of wilted petals.

Spells of their past lives
force flowers to effervesce in abundance.

The season that ashes the world
tramples creatures into a netherworld.

Two Worlds

We neither escape dawn as a leaflet
nor slave nights as broken emerald stones –
a border between light and dark
tugs potently, our hearts.

We, the toys with mortal features –
flesh, bones, blood and pain, unbearable.

Emptiness obliges
us to explain
to trees, hills and rivers,
about life.

Black decides the world of nothing.
White decides the world of everything.

Emptiness walks with us
our shadows drag us back.

Emptiness sheds the skin of days
but dreams don't let us go wasted.

Heart wants to fly higher than clouds
but the black world wraps it up with purity.

Our body’s shadow devours the sun’s rays
but the white world draws borders to the body

Both worlds make puppets out of us
in their pretentious veil of kindness.

They are transparent –
they wear us too,
dwell on earth with air
as our companions
leaving us orphaned.

Ancestors

Darkness rains
when bats weep in chorus.

Night thickens as katkya
where living beings go back to wombs.

Beyond the sky our ancestors
wait for news from earth.

Fireflies carry
our whereabouts to bloomed stars,
stars turn into buds.

Our ancestors
stash the buds they gathered,
buds turn into golden seeds,
they sow them in the soil of the sky
to harvest human beings.

Note: Katkya means Collyrium.

Cowrie Shell

By the side of footprints on the shores,
the air sings from the cowrie shell
in the graceful nights.

The scary heartbeat of death
and prickly suffering pain,
hide for strength inside the shell.

The warm embrace of love,
and blind horses of happiness
flits from the shell,
awakening the water flies.

Wrecked boats’
unrusted treasure,
fishermen who lost their bodies
weeping in the courtyard of death,
all together sing for the shells.

Shells rustle, crackle
and mingle with the gusts
of wind, and speak
the good and bad of all creatures.

Death

Since my childhood
I saw death as an untouchable.

When death found herself
to be an untouchable
she made the air her chariot,
travelled everywhere
in search of ponds
filled with human blood
to cleanse herself of untouchability.

For years together I
watched her journey.

I heard
that death in her quests
asked farm animals
to sacrifice themselves
for her sake.

In the hamlet, the talk of death
tunnels into my heart
gathering memories of the dead.

Somewhere, sometimes
if death comes face to face
it seems that time has frozen.

In this eternal earth
I wept innumerable tears
for orphaned death.

I thought I would be her companion
but I could not do anything
when I realised
one of us must disappear.

To darkness
I wrote again and again
the same letters
I had written in my imagination
the ink, starlight.

Whenever she decides to wash away
her untouchability,
she touches blood,
blood instantly clots.
Untouchability
never dared come to me.

Waiting for her to come to me
I kept reading the letters
I had written to darkness.

Oh the Forest

Forest, feed me green.
I, a son of you, like many –
the umbilical cord of mine
grounded in your womb,
thin fingers crawl every time into me
when I touch the sand.
Allow me to understand the green.

Green, sing me a song.
I, an echo in the valley,
I lost my words in your forest,
I forfeited my silhouette –
sing for me with my words,
our language needs to echo, great,
sing for me, oh the green
of infinite languages.

The green,
let me discover my ancestor’s remnants
their whole life, they knew your secrets,
you played the game of eclipse with them.
they all have strayed within the game
centuries have passed, show me at least their fossils.

The green,
give voice to the creatures
wandering in your hearts garden.
I want them to speak to me,
I will not harm but gently touch them with my love.
You can speak to me.
I know a little poetry
they would admire you if you allow me to recite.

Oh forest, oh green
nothing has been left on the earth
except for a labyrinth where
We all meet one day and sing to die.

Love’s Quest

At a corner
on the crystal piece of sorrow
love sat alone,

kept on gazing at passers-by
for the best companion.

Animals passed in silence,
footsteps remained clear.

The wind passed by,
dust raised like a coiled snake
filling the eyes.

Rain passed hiding a rainbow,
colours mingled in love tears
when it tried cleaning dust.

Slowly, like a snail,
forest passed with its flowers,
honey fell before love –
like the solitude of the forest.

The human being passed,
a heart full of despair
his appearance scared love.

Finally, it was the turn of death.
It passed, its pale innocent face,
with no clothes.

Love chose death
and denounced its loneliness.

Ramesh Karthik Nayak (Nunnavath Karthik) is the winner of the 2024 Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar in Telugu for his short story collection, Dhavlo. He is the first tribal and youngest Telugu author to be awarded the prize at the age of 26. He is a bilingual poet and short-story writer from Telangana.

Excerpted with permission from Chakmak, Ramesh Karthik Nayak, Red River Press.