Trekking for Grain

I like Kanwa Maharshi's empathy

I like to be coalesced into Karna's agony

I like to be drenched in Karunashri's[1] poetry

Above all, I like my father

I like my father who toiled away day and night

For a few manikas[2] of grain he trekked afar

I don't know;

Whether Arjuna rightly ate a morsel of rice or not

But I know;

The lump of clay and its weight

It broke like curd in the pitch dark

With a stroke of my father's crowbar

I don't know;

Whether Lord Krishna made love or not

In the moonlit Repalle[3]

But I know;

The moon queen was amazed

While my father was winnowing

It is sloka that ejected my father

And it left him sorrowful

The very sloka is now falling

On the feet of my father

Now he owns it

And he is in me now