This is an excerpt of a lovely poem by Baruk:
in your language, not mine
will i abuse and curse at you
and scream and rail and rant at you
in your language, not mine.
The poem has been recognized by Amnesty International (Aotearoa New Zealand) and was read out on Courage Day.
Also read this post called Grin and the interesting discussions in the comment section.
Initially when I began reading his blog, I thought his posts were too full of anger. Then, I slowly got used to his way of writing and began loving the way he morphs his angst into lovely, strong poems.
Ever so often, I feel sad that poems only pose prodding questions in a wordy way, questions to which we have no answers and so get frustrated. Once out of the system, the best a good poem can do is to act as a catalyst for more thoughts, introspection and sometimes debates. But even within this limited scope, poems can do a mighty lot.
Read about George Orwell's take on poems that I mentioned in this long post. He says that poems can survive even in the face of totalitarianism. Excerpts from Orwell's essay are written towards the end.
Coming back to this poem...
As I read In your language not mine again, I realise how relevant it is in the vicious times we live in. The immediate connect reading it this time was with the episode in which MNS members of legislature allegedly manhandled and even slapped Samajwadi party MLA Abu Azmi when he began taking his oath in Hindi. Some people were actually cheering the vandalism as another act of bravado in defense of Marathi asmita...
My favourite poem from Baruk is Api's thlan
