ORIYA POETRY

 
BENUDHAR RAUT
 
 
 

LOVE'S MYSTERY
 

I love myself, immersed in my own mystery
in the fast-moving years of youth;
and yet how little I know
the image of my love, the voice of my body
the song of my gestures known, unknown
the smiles and the looks!

Like the sea or the vocalist
how I lose myself in unknowing
the mysterious voice of the silence!

I too love you
you are nearest to me like my own self;
may be that is why you make me
pine for the unknown
in unrealised eagerness.

The waves of desires dancing
on your nubile gestures in
the intricate leela of Vrindaban
you are my self's self
as obscure to me as my own self.
 

Translation:
Sitakant Mahapatra
 
 

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BRAHMOTRI MOHANTY
 
 

MOSS
 

My feet slipped in the yard,
too much of moss there.

So what if I fell down?
Ashamed?
What should I be ashamed of?
It's natural to fall.And there is glory
in getting up.
Some are smiling as if their feet
haven't slipped ever
on this moss.

Scrub you may hard and often,
it grows again,this moss:
to grow is its nature,
and nothing can make it vanish.
Of course,I should have been careful
while walking down the yard.
That would have spared me
such a big fall.
My hands and feet are injured.

In the unhurt body
this injury is not much.
Soon it will heal,the ache
may last till tomorrow.
The scar will remain for sometime,and
gradually it will merge into my skin.

After my fall,I hope you will be cautious
as you walk from this side to that,
you've to move very slowly,you know,
pressing your feet to the ground.
And if you slip even after that
I must say you didn't move with caution,
only faked to do so.

Mark these three words: moss,fall and caution;
inevitably linked they are.
If you take them together and infer a meaning,
it's of some use,otherwise
you will continue to slip-and-fall,again and again,
and take in its pain.
 

Translation:
Rabindra K Swain
 

THE POET
 
 

Someone makes me write with my hand in his,
His breath in my experience,
his breathing warm in my ears.
Yet do I know what gets written on this paper?
Intoxicated as I am then by that ecstatic closeness,
I live on in my own amazement.

But realization makes me aware then
That he isn't there;where then is the delight
of his touch?
Merely he has written a poem and left it behind,
A poem resembling a poem,
For me to be the poet of the poem.
 

Translation:
Jayanta Mahapatra
 

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BRAJAKISHORE DAS
 
 

THE SPIDER
 

The ovum of pains
and pleasures
is so imprisoned
within the impenetrable webs of time
that the rainbow of passion
drops down like a sacred thread
from the chest of the violet skies.

Who's going to be born
out of the unbroken endurance
of the holy mother earth?

A tramp of a poet
restlessly pining for his beloved...
Or an unearthly Pururava
longing for coition
with Urvasi--the darling of gods...
Or a thorn-crowned Son of Man?
In the divine dawn of compassion
the subtle pierces the gross
and a formless "anustup" metre
penetrates into the subtle.

And then is annihilated
the mystic kingdom
of the spider.
 

Translation:
The poet.

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MainDoor
 
 

A Varnamala  Visualization