WISE OLD WOODY
Black pots and white beard, an old man sits
Enjoying the sun, eating boiled wooden bits.
He shakes his head, hums and he sings a merry song
You might think he’s a sage, but you’d be wrong!
Mutter-mutter he does utter words that make no sense—
‘Full of cobwebs is the sky, wood has holes hence.’
His bald head gets hot, his body pours with sweat,
Angrily, he yells, ‘No one understands this yet!
Not one blind fool has any sense in stock
Donkey! Morons! All they know is how to run amok.
Which wood has what juice, they can’t begin to guess,
Or why the new moon makes holes in wood, no less.’
Round-about scritchy-scratchy he does many sums
Split wood splat wood he adds up on his thumbs:
Which crack tastes good, and which like hell,
Which crack has exactly what kind of smell.
Rat-a-tat knock-knock one against the other
‘I know how to stop wood being such a bother.
I’ve messed around so long with wooden sticks,
I know just how to put an end to all their tricks!
Which one can be tamed, which one is quiet,
Which one keeps flickering, which one’s a riot.
Which one knows nothing, neither truth nor lies,
I know why wood has holes, because I am wise.’
Original: Kaathburo (Abol tabol by Sukumar Roy) MISH-MASH A duck and a porcupine, no one knows how,
(Contrary to grammar) are a duckupine now.
The stork told the tortoise, ‘Isn’t this fun!
As the stortoise, we’re second to none!’
The parrot-faced lizard felt rather silly—
Must he give up insects and start eating chilli?
The goat charged the scorpion at a rapid run
Jumped on his back, now head and tail are one.
The giraffe lost his taste for roaming far and wide,
Like a grasshopper he’d rather jump and glide.
The cow said, ‘Am I sick, too, from this disease?
Or why should the rooster chase me, if you please?’
And oh the poor elewhale—that was a bungle,
While Whale yearns for the sea, Eli wants the jungle.
The hornbill was desperate as it had no horns,
Merged with a deer now, it no longer mourns. Original: Khichuri(Abol tabol by Sukumar Roy)
GLIBBERISH-GIBBERISH Come happy fool whimsical cool
come dreaming dancing fancy-free,
Come mad musician glad glusician
beating your drum with glee.
Come o come where mad songs are sung
without any meaning or tune,
Come to the place where without a trace
your mind floats off like a loon.
Come scatterbrain up tidy lane
wake, shake and rattle and roll,
Come lawless creatures with wilful features
each unbound and clueless soul.
Nonsensical ways topsy-turvy gaze
stay delirious all the time,
Come you travellers to the world of babblers
and the beat of impossible rhyme. Original: Abol tabol (Abol tabol by Sukumar Roy) Source www.penguinbooksindia.com |
