Bharat Majhi (Oriya)
The Sculptor
It does not pay to blame the butterfly.
Friends, it is not as if I would become a garden someday!
So kindly cease from giving me advances for making statues;
As I don’t have even a couple of palmfuls
Of soil after the division of the land.
I had earth that could have become statues; gods, goddesses, objects of affection and reverence;
But I thought that for me all the gods have died.
Therefore,
That land has been sold.
Have not you seen?
At the same place a lush garden has grown.
I do agree that my skills don’t lie in cooking,
Or for that matter in gardening.
But you just might get two tight whacks if you raise the matter of the statues.
Therefore, friends! It’s prudent to desist!
If you have to say something,
Then let’s talk about the earth,
And about the tears that have been shed;
Offer each other lovely platitudes about the beauty of the earth.
Tears matter,
Till the time they inhabit the universe of the eyes.
Why search for them in the dust after they drop?
I don’t say that this earth is pretty after seeing your idiotic gardens;
If I might have,
Then the question of the butterflies could have been raised legitimately.
Hence dear friends!
Let’s face the bland fact that I won’t make statues any longer.
But it will be nice if you could come at least once a year,
And talk some random jazz, shed a few wayward tears,
And bitch about the idiocy of gardens in general.
After my return
Please don’t desert the post even after my return,
Stick to it.
Please don’t throw the flowers away,
Does it really matter if they are fresh or stale?
Please open all my hidden, deserted dreams,
By embossing them.
Please invert all the lamps everywhere,
And stop hating the darkness.
Please face the sea without blinking,
And yet, do not hate the sky.
Please!!!
Please know the earth to be a humungous point,
Try and stay there.
Please wait for yourself,
And while doing so, please wake up!
Please remember, that I’ll return to this only earth that there is.
Please remember that I’ll return,
Because I have sown the path with mustard seeds,
Please remember that path.
Song
These days you sing at almost every gathering,
And I follow you shamelessly.
I breathlessly drink your voice,
Its shape, texture and tone, with an abandon
That sometimes shocks even me.
Perhaps you don’t know,
That before I come to listen to you I take off
All the noise around me.
I find my way back after the abandon of your songs,
Through my very own lost track to home.
Good!
In fact, very good indeed!!!
These songs are enough!
Enough to forget the history of your memories;
For the resolution of the defects in my horoscope,
As they are as dense and close as the
Excitement of the claps occasioned by your songs.
Perhaps even I had left home one day,
Thinking that I too will learn to sing.
I really don’t know how,
But I was back home the next afternoon,
Having caught the earliest train in the morning.
When I hear your songs these days,
It seems as if I am offering you a glass of chilled water,
After having glimpsed a half of
One of your destitute hands.
When I hear your songs these days,
It seems as if there is a staircase going up till the sky,
And I am straining hard to go,
And harvest the moon on a new moon night.
Therefore, please keep on singing.
I am there, always,
Invisible; to frame the visions;
I keep on clapping shamelessly,
In the breathless abandon of the visions not induced by your songs.
Song for the self
I understood as much I heard.
Janhi flowers strewn across the branch,
Stretched away after shooing me out of their way;
The clouds opened their mouth,
And then spit out the rains.
I put my ears close to the heart of the clouds,
And heard.
And I understood as much as I heard.
I had nothing to say,
Absolutely nothing indeed!
Then why was I being called by the forest, the river and the birds?
Why was the sun rising,
And making me rise above the noise of the streets?
All my ancestors are busy
Climbing stairs,
And all my successors are busy counting them.
Does anyone listen to the cribbing
Of someone who cannot speak? Definitely not
Eyes about to brim over with tears,
Or the flowers that bloomed out of season.
For the sleep-addicted time, therefore,
I have nothing,
Nothing indeed!
I understood just as much I heard.
Love song
I counted whatever I could not do,
And cried.
I have to speak if so demanded:
I have to say that the ground beneath my feet is still green,
The snake slithering away is still brown,
The wind muscling its way through my diseased windows,
Is still cursed,
That my head is still hot and my heart is still cold and still.
I have written and erased so many names.
But I could never tell any of them –
That, this is the soil, and that is sin,
This is a tree, and that is the wind.
This is a ghost, and that is love;
And more than anything else I could never tell any one of them,
That this is life.
I have written and erased so many names.
I counted whatever I could not do,
And cried.
Dedication
May every end not come as a sigh.
May the dawns be free from the dark clouds.
Every peace does not need a war.
Every sea does not need rivers.
May every act of creation be a challenge,
And the beak and the voice of every bird be filled.
May every wave throw back some sweetness,
And the bite of every thorn be a surrender of flowers.
May every drop of tear nurture our faith,
May every kiss warm our apprehensions,
And may the self-destruction of each dejection,
Remind us that we are men.
The Black sheep
Agreed, that everything was just my dream.
I had wanted that all the beautiful girls
In the world should understand poetry;
That the letters of all mothers be auctioned
For millions of dollars;
That flowers be completely careless
About either the storms or the rains;
That famines be tolerable;
Like the legendary tolerability of sorrow in dreams,
May hills be worshipped and not saalagrams;
Agreed, that everything was just my dream.
What else could I have given to anyone here?
Whose dying harvest could I have salvaged?
For whom could I have set a ladder till the heavens?
Which birds could I have taught
The science of flying away with the net
With all my useless ineptitude?
But I know for sure,
That no one has the guts to listen my dreams breathe.
Because I am the black sheep of lineage that rarely sleeps.
M R Renukumar (Malayalam)
The Silent Beast
Be up
before the crow
touches the ground.
Must clear the cow dung.
Clean the cowshed
before he’s here,
The milking-man.
The milk-pot,
the oil-can,
Must keep them handy.
When he’s gone,
the milking done,
the milk measured,
Mark today’s volume
with a pencil
on the calendar.
Don’t forget.
The haystack’s thinned.
Even so,
must climb up,
pull down some,
for it to feed.
Go
to three houses,
of the neighbours.
Must slip into the
backyards,
get the leftovers.
Mud pot on hip,
must cross,
scorching glances
of men
angling by the canal.
Stir, stir
as the snout dips,
searching for feed
still dry.
Must swat hard, quick,
Finish off
that bloodsucker,
the leopard-wasp,
on its belly.
Scratch
the folds
on its neck,
as it stretches out,
belly full,
chewing the cud.
Must sharpen
the sickle
on the rough washing stone.
Go, cut fresh grass
in the priest’s yard.
Must wait for passers-by
to help lift
the bundle.
Be careful.
Don’t slip
while crossing
the single-log bridge.
Must drink up the rice-gruel.
Wash the bowl.
Must blow out the lamp.
Rest head,
on left hand,
Turn body,
to one side,
Fill up the depth
of the soul
with nothingness.
Must
be up
before the crow
descends
to the ground.
Testimony
Out of the woods
the bundle of dry leaves gathered,
blood on your lips.
‘It was a twig
that slashed’ – your
faltering testimony.
Moves in the Night
The Opening
marred by squabbes
over white pawns.
The acrobatics
of heads
and tails,
jostling, pushing, shoving,
straining hard inside,
the first move,
never to be shared.
The lethal chessboard
of the night
turns fecund.
Sprawl out,
swoon off,
the worsted.
Sprawl out,
stretch limbs,
the victorious.
Playmate
Saw her once
by the road
in the scorching sun.
Sitting in the shade
of the woven
leaf-thatch,
fixed on the side,
she was
breaking granite.
The old pluck
was missing.
It used to
spring up,
as she threw up the stones,
and caught them,
in nimble fingers.
Her score soaring,
mine, drowning.
That old dogged drive.
I can hear the sounds
When our eyes
thread together
She talks
casual stuff,
and I bleed
from her scratches.
As drops of blood
well upon
the delicate film
of the past,
she hurries past
shaking off
a soundless laugh
upon the kaana flowers.
The breeze brings me
the scent of her laughter
Upon the screen descend
the dragon-flies
she’s shooed off.
Can still hear
the sounds
as I soak into
stupor,
of her bathing the child,
of her doing the washing,
of her wringing the clothes.
Jiban Narah (Assameese)
A tale toppled
The barking of a dog under the bamboos
The barking merged with grandpa’s cough
How
Dog : Buddy I won’t stay with you any longer
Tiger : Why mate ?
Dog : I hadn’t known before you’re scared of people.
From now on I’m going to live with people without fear.
The supple bamboos Grandpa planted long ago
Clambered up the ladder to the sun
We clambered onto Granny’s laps
Splitting the knotty blossoms woven on the loom
Stretching strides over slender shadows
We were to reach either side of the river.
It’s morning on one bank
Night on the other
So sparkling white is the river-sand
I hadn’t known before, I’ve come to know now
And I’ve come to know
River-sands cannot be soaked
Never never –– said water and earth
And I’ve come to know
Man cannot be known
Never never –– said the dog
Beneath the bamboos earth water sand
Live light and shade sunlight rain
A hut made by father’s hands
And the winds
And
By mother’s hands
And lightning yarn
Scaling the ladder from this hut
The people turning into birds and beasts worms and insects
Flee
Flee fever ailments childhood adolescence old-age
Flee the past the present the future
Grandpa too made off one day
Taking the dog along
The barking of the dog
Twined round the ladder
The rains descend in sheets shattering the sky
The dreamy web of illusion spreads
The yearning for rain hasn’t been sated
yui yui – – do you hear ?
Or is it a sudden fit of delusion
On the bed of rain and the woods
At the crossroads of incoherent thoughts
Why does a utopian poet fall prey
Is man an isle
Or a fleeting thrill....
Here, slowly drifts a strain
Slowly slumber pulls to a soft bedspread....
In the ripples raised by fish
A faint light stirs to a swing
From the bottom of the brimful pond
The coiled notes of the water spill over and spread
What commotion do we start at
Why does the facial hue change
All of a sudden
Is this a delusion or a dream in slumber....
Someone passes by waving from the distance
Hey there ! How’re you ?
Fine
Why fine ?
A tale toppled
A bark
A dove
Crawling out from the tale’s shell up to the courtyard
Granny opens the tangled blossoms
Opens the causeway of Maying Makkong1
Clambering down over the sky of birth and rebirth
The Subaltern
On digging history thousands of villages get ravaged
Under the earth and mingle with the river-water
Some unreal men rise from the water and stare transfixed –
At the historian and the hero of history
Standing across from the shadows of the dead
The historian opens up oddities
Theorises with condensed letters shuffles the past
Learning about it the indigent lot
Burst into laughter years after and sing :
Cunning lads love naive lasses
History loves the dumb
The lyrics make the unreal men applaud and dip into the river immersed under the water they sing :
None can keep count of the current under water
None can keep count of the ripplings of water
And none can close the count of the lies of history
Krishna Leela transformation :1
Pushing through the female crowd
Krishna crushes the grass
the grass flourish
In the downpour
The sun and woman
A primitive reminiscence
Grasping their bosoms
The women jump into the river
In the river there's no water,
O'Krishna no water
How do we wash our bodies
A whiff of scream rends Krishna's heart
Pushing through the crowd Krishna descends to the river
Never to return from the river eternally
Krishna Leela transformation : 2
Krishna doesn't return from the waters throughout eternity
Throughout eternity does the leela go on
The leela has no beginning no end
Krishna too has no beginning no end
What has an end O' Krishna
We await with the flame of lust lit in our hearts
Then die out burning
Burn out to ash
I'm in fire
I'm in ash
Krishna is my name
I'm a flower blooming in the void
Krishna Leela transformation : 3
Suddenly the roar of a tiger in the woods
The trees flee terrified by the roar
The grass-plots come flying in panic
And thump into a tribal village
The villagers come out
With machetes-axes-spears-spikes
And
Block the tiger's way
The tiger finding no way out for escape
Changes its form in fear into a man
Oh! look at its act–
Catch it! Catch it! catch it! – the people shout
Assuming the form of man it presents itself
I'm Krishna!
I'm Krishna!!
So what, we don't know you –
Catch it! catch it!! catch it!!!
I'm Krishna
Of the Kirtana-Ghosha2
Of Kirtana-Ghosha ?
Then calm down O' people calm down
Leave him alone
Leave the poor being alone
Krishna, you really scared us out of our wits
You can transform yourself even into a man from a tiger
– The people break into a guffaw
I can also transform myself into a tiger from a man
No, don't don't
We're scared
We're scared
Krishna Leela transformation : 4
Why do you look for
Flowers blooming in the void
Teenaged girls in a group sprouting with lust
Move about on the pavement
Yet Krishna doesn't see them
All glossed in splendour
Krishna hangs on the computer screen
How Krishna cannot transform himself
From man to tiger
For fear of mice
1 Leela : amorous sport of Krishna of the Mahabharata.
2 Kirtana–Ghosha : a modified version of the Bhagavata in Assamese by the great Vaishnavite saint, poet and social scientist, Sankardeva (1449-1568) which along with the Naam–Ghosha by Madhabdeva (1489-1596), poet, scholar chief associate and disciple of Sankardeva, contributed extensively towards the neo-Vaishnavite movement in Assam. These two books also had a great impact on the tribal societies.
A lot of thanks to my friend Mandakranta SEN, who sent to me all these poems.
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