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ORIYA POETRY
DEVDAS CHHOTRAY
THE LONG-HAIRED GIRL
Once,a long-haired girl had come to my room,
her breasts like melting light,hands wreathed
in flowers and death,two cool eyes in the rust
of her tears.An actress of unforgiving love
and impassive blood,the pores of her skin excited
with envy,the glory of her lies bedazzling her youth
over and over again,the lines of her body in gleaming gold,
and on her face sin and prayer.One day a long-haired girl had come to my room.
All alone.For a brief moment,and then was gone,
for I was away in some distant land;and in my house
a slave,an eunuch,stood on guard.
Translation :
Jayanta Mahapatra
DIPAK MISHRA
RUMOURS
It's true--and not a rumour--
that sometimes,after moonrise,
the night is as bright as the day.The moon,too,as much as the sun,
throws out shadows.It's true--and no rumour--
that sometimes dead men and women smile.
I have myself seen a young woman called Priyamvada
smiling after she hanged herself
on a full-moon night.
When they laid her on the hearse
she blew away,with a gust of her smile,
the face of the lover who should have come.
I had never seen a smile
so beautiful and so full of life
on her lips,in her eyes and,above all,
on her face
as long as she had lived.It's true--and no rumour--
that sometimes darkness spreads like a fog.
Look at the child,sleeping quietly in the cradle.
He had raised quite a clamour
in his mother's lap just a moment ago.
Memories from some earlier life
come down in dreams
and settle on the face
that now looks like the inside of an ancient temple--
dark,except for the tentative glow
of an earthen lamp.Practically everyone can
swim his way through a pool.
Crossing the wind's rough sea
is a far more difficult enterprise.Not many can continue to be themselves
once they are face to face
with memory gushing down like a river in spate,
or arriving in inconsolable blasts
of a restless storm.I shall continue to be myself.
I am no fool,and shall never believe
in rumours according to which
thinking about one who has gone away
always makes one very,very sad.
Translation :
Ramakanta Rath
HARIHAR MISHRA
NOON PRAYER
Along with the flow of my blood,
through the body's blue cavern,
they come,
those millions of fireflies,stars and nebulae;
thousands of fish lift me,
like memories,from the ocean floor.And,like a snake,
the twelve-cubit-long sigh of despair
rises from the small temple of my body
and crawls up its broken walls.Drenched in rain
and in the anguish of moonlight,
many inert shadows
huddle about its burnt-out wick's smell,
and the newcomer who once left
returns through the open spaces in the leaves.Morning brings back the body's distances,
with bewildered cries
night-birds swaying from its nerves fly away,
as the fortified morning
breaks through the chest-walls.And I lose myself,melting away elsewhere.
Elsewhere,
my sacrificial fire's smoke rises into the sky.
Translation :
Jayanta Mahapatra
A Varnamala Visualization