TRANSLATED FROM ODIA BY THE POET
A poem can’t do a damn thing
Maybe, someday you will read my poem.
The puppy lying on the road
And exhaling its last breath,
Or the fairy who lost her way
And was raped
Last night by three men,
Or an unknown someone
Whose childhood has been trapped
In the prison of prolonged nightmares –
My poem will return
As the last syllable of their silences.
It will return
And at 6:45 am
It will knock on your door
And will keep knocking until
The door opens.
‘But there’s no one here!’
It will return
And jump
Straight into your morning
Tea-cup, you wouldn’t know.
You will stir your tea
With two teaspoons of sugar.
My poem will dissolve in your blood.
Then you will go to the temple,
Or to the fish market
Or to some fair to sell
Yourself.
No, I don’t think you will ever
Read my poem.
But every evening
While coming back
To yourself, on an endless road,
Trying too hard to reach,
You will realize,
One day,
That you have turned into
The last line of my poem.
Chhotu
What is it to him if tomorrow
This government goes down,
If the petrol price goes up,
If suddenly tonight
Our earth stops revolving around the sun,
What is it to him?
He will come again tomorrow morning,
Putting on the same old loose t-shirt,
And the smile,
Like that of a tired God.
An old mother,
(More old! Tune it properly!)
And an unmarried sister at home –
He might have, or might not.
Are you imagining
A drunkard father as well?
Why be so sentimental?
They will make art films about him.
He won’t watch them,
Ever.
He won’t be able
To watch even a discarded dream
Easily available in any market.
He will only watch hunger,
Hunger the question,
Hunger the answer,
Hunger the dream,
And hunger
When the dream comes true.
He will come again tomorrow morning,
To fill empty glasses,
To put them on your table,
To congratulate himself
(Although you know it’s a lie)
That he isn’t as hungry as you.
The Newspaper
The newspaper usually comes
Early in the morning,
Everyday.
In my childhood though,
It used to be the evening when
The newspaper finally arrived,
Jeje used to wait
Eagerly,
‘As if you have plans to join politics!’
Jejema used to make faces.
The old hawker guy who brought
Newspaper to my place everyday,
A truck hit him yesterday near the crossing.
Today, the newspaper hasn’t come.
No way to know
If the old man has made it
To the newspaper or
Not.
I have sold all the old newspapers
To the kabaadiwala yesterday,
Sold the already-stale 2G Spectrum,
Dadri and IPL, sold
The smile of the baby with that diaper,
All the fairness of the girl
Who attained it
In just 3 weeks using that cream,
Colourful promises to
Bring back the missing pleasure
With that capsule,
Sexy look of that ITEM-GIRL,
Sold everything
At one fixed rate,
Five rupees per kilo.
There’s not a single piece of newspaper
In my house anymore.
I am about to leave for the hospital.
I will look for the bed
Of that old hawker guy
And bring my copy of the newspaper
From him.
Note – Jeje (in Odia) – grandfather, Jejema – grandmother, kabaadiwala – the man who goes door to door and collects junk.
For that lonely Man
(dedicated to Jayanta Mahapatra)
“Who knew that the darkness that froze inside my heart would eventually lead me
to poetry?…
All my poems – all those tiny pieces of darkness inside my heart coming out in the
form of my poems – could they completely cleanse me? Never.”
– Jayanta Mahapatra
(1)
Tonight
Let there be a ceremony
Of darkness here.
We, who are still here
With a torchlight that’s dying down,
We, who are looking for a path
That will take us to the highways,
Let us all walk barefoot night,
In the dark,
Let us stumble upon the rocks on our path,
All the fences and the barbed wires,
Let us stumble again and again.
Let there be blood
Coming out from our feet,
From our hearts,
From the darkness.
Let it all trickle down
Before the night comes to an end.
(2)
How does it matter
If we survive or not,
When this night finally ends?
We will definitely see
In the diluted darkness of the dawn,
A new map on the earth,
Drawn in our blood;
And in the sky
At least two new-born sanguine stars;
And we will see
There still remain
Much darkness, much blood to be spent.
Someone Somewhere
It’s been a while since I last cried.
In the crowd of countless selfies,
While bitching about
The rest of the world, while getting lost
From my own self, every single time
I have planned about crying a little bit.
While explaining
‘Yeah! I’m good’
To unknown people, while
Burning second after second
Of all the twenty-four hours
And then tossing them away
Like that,
I have often thought
If I could cry a little bit!
All night, while talking
To a blank sheet of paper,
While waiting for the words
Jogging on the darkness
Outside my window
And taking forever to finish,
I have only wanted to cry.
There’s no reason why I should cry.
Just like there’s no reason why
Abhay Babu’s twenty-year-old nephew
Should die in an accident yesterday.
Just like there’s no reason
Why a yellow blossom
Should still spring its head out
From the cleavage of rocks.
Those who can’t cry at all
Also fall asleep
By the time the dawn arrives.
In a small village somewhere,
Someone sure keeps crying,
Alone,
For our tiny world.
Also, read The Lindens’ Perfume by Luigi Cannillo, translated from The Italian by Paolo Belluso, Published by The Antonym.
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