Skip to main content

La Raçaillaise

Why do we humans bother to make nations and draw boundaries and have national identities? What ever happened to the Stone Age, when different hunter-gatherer bands roamed around, eating food, playing games and making love and war just the same as we do in a 'civilised' manner today?

Do dogs do this? Do they were to constitute republics and elect leaders? Have they a national anthem?

I asked my friend Puppysingh, and he told me in his language. When they collectively bay at the moon, they are in fact affirming their national solidarity. Here is the translation of the anthem of the Mangy Republic:-

La Raçaillaise
by Chiennoir deRues


In streets and dingy alleys where
Our fathers fought before us;
Inder staris, in hollows where
Our mothers had littered us;
O'er rubbish bin and gutter filth
A republic of dogs we build!
We affirm a mongrel guild
We claim a canine commonwealth!

No collar, leash or metal chain
Shall hence inhibit our will!
Our freedoms o'er all terrain
Is proclaimed from every hill!
At the moon gaily we bay
And snarl and bark and hiss and growl!
No human dare call us foul
Now a dog shall have his day!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

She's complicated

She's complicated. She'll charm you with charts, statistics and that corporate smile. But look into those eyes, they're fiercely bohemian. She's complicated. Her chatterings seem to resonate with happy sounds, but listen with the other ear, to an unhidden lament. She's complicated. Her silences agonise, her voice echoes in her absence. And yet there is a mild dread as her name flashes on the ringing phone. She's complicated. Sometimes she's a poetess, shallow, romantic, trying to hide a sardonic, world-weary wit. She's complicated. She could be a spiteful Fury, wrath unabated, but that's just to hide the lamb-hugging girl within. She's complicated. She's an enchantress, a fool, a tyrant, a nurse, an imp, a priestess, but she's generally a good friend. She's complicated. Published in Making Waves - A Poetry Anthology , ed. Pam & Bill Swyers; Swyers Publishing 2011. ISBN: 978-0-9843113-6-1.

Mother

Mother has many names. Anak Krakatau might be one of them, Or Uttarkashi or Qinghai, Haiti certainly is. She's the mother that swallowed Maui into her womb, the mother that disarmed Karna, who led Oedipus to sin. She plays pranks too, in that cheerful way unique to her. We find strange names to give them - tsunami, hurricane. Kalki is another name we've given her, for when she will be an old woman looking for some kind of elixir of youth. Perhaps some quack will mislead her to find it in our blood. She has a heart of gold they say - pure, molten lava, that sometimes erupts on her skin like a ripe pimple. She loves nothing more than the sound of babies crying - orphaned, bloodied, hungry, dying their carcasses feeding hyaenas. But hyaenas are her children too. But she is the green mother who feeds us, clothes us, protects us from the sun's ionizing radiation, we came from her loins, which is where we go.

बर्फी की शादी - बालकविता

बर्फी के घर में शादी है, दुल्हा उसका लड्डू है, माला उसकी किशमिश है, चूडी उसकी काजू है, बादाम उसकी बाली है, चाँदी की उसकी चुनरी है! यह कृति उमर बहुभाषीय रूपांन्तरक की मदद से देवनागरी में टाइप की गई है|