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ORIYA POETRY
MANORAMA MOHAPATRA BISWAL
MY WHOLE LIFE FOR HIM
If ever he comes under a silent sun
Dampening my eyelids
Or else in a heavy downpour
Of the month of shravan
In the behag raga of the sarangi--How would he know
I am not here any longer?
I burn like a wound
On some missile range by the sea.Surely,he will come.
The neem tree must have flowered,
Its fragrance drifting all around.
He'll grope for a lost childhood,
Will mope over it.
He couldn't have forgotten
That childhood like a squirrel's back,
The village childhood
Full of neem and mustard flowers.A quiet girl like a shadow
Red-hued like the manjistha bloom
A sullen sunset in her eyes
Will ask about me
And of other things
But how would she know
For whom
A whole life passed,
Waiting, waiting.
Translation:
Jagannath Prasad Das
and Ariene Zide
PRABASINI MAHAKUD TIWARI
THE NIGHT
1.
Today I have become the night.
Let no light touch me.
Let the meaning I have been cease.
Let my body become a different body.
Let all names signifying me disappear.
Pushed by an irresistible impulse
to become the night
I arrived here.
Let me become the night today.
I have a single aspiration today--
to become the night,
to abolish the ugliness in everything
and install beauty in its place.2.
How long must I wait
before it is night?
One cannot recollect the day's looks
unless it is night.
The moon and the stars will not arrive
unless it is night.
The whole sky will be a wilderness
unless it is night.
How do I get the time
to bring back to my mind
your celebrated eyes
unless it is night?
How can the tuberoses of my steadfast love
blossom into expanding whiteness
unless it is night?
How long must I wait
before it is night?3.
Describing that night is unholy.
Remembering the eyes of that night
is also unholy.
Years pass,but that exquisite night
does not re-enter my mind
that's still,and on the way to holiness.
Some unfinished poem
was inscribed on that night's face.
In the lamplight of my soul
I had once read its lines.
I am the despair of that poem,
and I dissolve
in the night.
I am already an ingredient of the night,
but the splendour of that night
(which,once upon a time,
was my own body's splendour)
does not return,
and years pass.
A Varnamala Visualization