Macabre Queue

K. V. PUTTAPPA
(KUVEMPU)
Translated from the Kannada originalby “SHYAMA”

Why are you

(E’er so many!)
Edging in the queue
Clamouring to be born,
O hapless ones?

Don’t you see
How the earth’s congested already,
Its population
On the verge of explosion?
And lacking food
Most of it but looks a multitude
Of skeletons!

Why are you in such great hurry?
Unmindful of what womb it be
Or which the place of birth,
Somehow to be born on earth
Is all you long for!
Does it stifle you where you are?
E’en the cluster-fig
Breeding countless insects
Would hang its head
Being outdone
By the human babies brought to bed
At the rate of crores per minute!

Without enough of food
We are ourselves starving here.
Whenever in a desperate mood
We take to means severe
Of plunging into pond or well–
Whichever’s near;
Of gulping down rats’ bane or ‘Follidol’,
Or ‘Tick 20 ‘.
Sometimes we even choose
To put our necks into the noose.
Thus do we quit this world day after day
And hasten thither where you stay!

To prevent you coming hither
Man has contrived devices quite a few
Like the loop, the pill, condom
And other contraceptives.
And to block your ingress
He has tried a subtler stratagem
Of idealizing celibacy and sanyas
And glorifying moksha
As life’s summum bonum.
But you have burst those man-made dikes
With a vengeance
In a bid to overrun this hemisphere!

Alas!
What affliction dire assails you there?– 
But an awful hell awaits you here,–Beware!

Why are you
Edging in the queue
Clamouring to be born,
O wretched spirits?