Translated from the Telugu to the English by K Purushotham
Avva, my mother—

she’s not a wick-lamp, safe in wall’s ledge

she’s the sun went astray in the rug of the sky,

she’s a famine in the stretched out phallu

of the mother-earth.
Avva, she is a timeless full-moon,

she’s an embodiment of struggle without dawn

her head, like an empty-grain in the mortar,

rebels against the pestle. 
The rising sun at the cockcrow

warms itself in avva’s eyes

she sweeps the stars of the dawn, and

smears dung-water on the front-yard

waking and feeding us, she leaves for work

neither the cow in the forest nor the calf at home

longs for each other.
Avva quite often falls in the furnace of

ayya, father’s anger because of bad meals,

a granule of sand or a hair in meals

or to grab her wages for drinking.
Avva, she is like a served-plate for us all

having become seeds in furrows,

she sprouts as green crops

planting and weeding in knee-deep paddy fields

ceaselessly working even after dusk

that’s my avva!
It’s my avva, who blew songs into the village,

while working the ridges in paddy fields

when avva gets at work, her sweat

turns into a fountain in the desert-sink

she’s an incessant flame in the mud-stove.
I can’t remember sweet memories of

clinging to avva’s waist

I never heard her sing me lullabies

or tell tales feeding me baby-food with

her hardened hands that formed soot.

I had no occasions of napping in her lap, yawning.

The memories of my screech for food,

holding a dented bowl in the hands

are still fresh. 
My avva, she’s a drumbeat on the broken drum

teaching the earth to bloom and to give fruit,

becoming leather for cheppulu.

Hers is like the agony of a top to

escape the string of the landlords.

Though she fed mother-earth with her breast,

the lords kept her at a distance from the yield.   
My avva, she’s a course-slab at the doorway that

heaped sorrow as a stack of history

tightening the phallu round her waist,

my avva is a question,

flashing a sickle in her hand.
               May the languages be doomed! They never accessed

               the brinks where my avva wandered.

               Original: mA avva, dukkAlni dunni pOsukunna tokkudubanda