Five poems by Ashwini Mishra have been translated from Odia by Snehaprava Das
RIDING THE EARTH: THE LAST DAY
Farewell!
A final goodbye!
The prologue to an epic of an endless rest
Has to be something
Extra special.
Gathering up all the strength
Of his senses
He strove to know the people
Around him.
He spoke fondly to them
‘Let you all be there in my heart
Forever,
May my world keep shimmering
With the glow of this endearing bond.’
He rode each passing day
That galloped on --
Like a well-fed, robust horse,
He rode on,
His feet securely stuck in the stirrups
His hands gripping the rein hard.
In an instant he could
Gallop around the earth
Cradling time under his arm.
The river, the ponds
And the rainclouds brought water
For his parched throat,
Towards the end of the journey
He called one by one his folks
Whom he held dear to his heart.
Some of them sounded assuring,
Some promised to come.
A few fulfilled their promises too
And came --
Still, there was a disturbing emptiness
Somewhere within.
Where has disappeared
The knot of love that had held
So strong in the days of past?
It was as though that knot
Had loosened and shredded.
Worn out like a weary page
In the mindscape,
Like someone that had once
Played a major role,
And had moved away from the centerstage,
To stand by the stage-wings
Distanced and dispassionate!
SWORD
I had never wanted
To wield a sword, a dagger or a goad.
I had always wanted to tuck plumes
into the hair,
To draw a lotus on the palm,
To play the notes of spring breeze
For the ears of the
Blazing summer noon.
I had wanted to be a dreamer,
To let my eyes close
At the touch of the delicate petals
Of exotic blooms!
But you did not let that happen.
My loved ones,
My folk I held close to my heart,
Fell at the merciless blows
Of harsh and hostile words
Your canons shot.
Your anger, your cruelty,
Weighed heavy on me
And a thunderstorm brew inside me.
Unnoticed by others.
In the end,
My compelled hands
Reached out to the scabbard
Lying abandoned under
The smuts of time
To draw the sword out.
THE CLAY LAMP
A clay lamp can always guess
How long the ghee and
The wick in it will last.
It is a living thing
How brief might its lifespan be.
It can, like all living beings,
Battle the wind and the darkness
In its struggle to survive
In an unenclosed space
That is vulnerable to
The assault of hooves of animals
Or the misty spray of the dew.
It knows that
The moment the curtain rises,
Revealing the stage
All set for the entry of light,
The first act of the play will end
And Its role will be over
Even before the makeup is
Rubbed off the face or the artificial tint
On the hair fades.
The hand that had lit it
May turn impassive, too!
A woman, her heart and hands
Focused on the act,
Keeps lighting up the clay lamps,
Not knowing for sure
How long their light would last
Or when the flames would die.
The idol of the goddess
That glittered in the light of
The lamps she lights
Never steps down to help her
When the flames char her body.
There is not a soul in sight
When her flame dies,
Except a few burnt insects.
GAZA
You neither have a chest
Nor arms now
To embrace those who once saw
You as their own
Like you did before.
The natives and the foreigners,
Who trod your soil,
Now take a turn either to your left
Or to your right and move on.
No longer the chirrups of birds
Come sprinkling down
Either from your sky, or your trees.
There are vultures everywhere
Scavenging on the tender human flesh
Getting fat and heavy.
The sun, the moon and the stars
In your sky are
Blown away into thousand pieces now.
You may dig up some of them
Graved under your ground.
The Death in your sea breeze
And in your explosive garb
Haunts living humans
To turn them to corpses.
Like a farmland ladened with crops,
Skeletons are heaped in your streets.
Houses and buildings where life dwelt
Are mounds of shattered concrete.
Wreckage of kitchenware,
And of home appliances
Lie on the desolate roads
In pathetic scatters.
A book satchel slings from the
Severed hand of a dead child.
The thirst for war is not quelled yet,
New strategies are deliberated upon
To pursue newer missions of death.
New weapons must be hoarded
In the arsenal
To launch an attack on the netherworld
After this world is razed to ruins.
WHIP
The whip that once basked proud in
The love of the kings and the feudal lords
And danced in elation on
The defenseless back of the oppressed,
Now lies worn and weary
In a niche in the royal palace or
Behind the glass doors in the shelf
Of a museum,
Coated in dust and dirt.
The obsequious tanners,
Who were far below the
Aristocracy,
Polished this tool of tyranny
Bright with oil,
And it jumped crazy
On their haggard backs,
Drawing crooked lines
Of livid blue and red.
How wide is the chasm between
Sage Dadhichi who gave his bones
For forging a thunderbolt
To kill demon Brutrasura*,
And the stingray that gave its tail to
Shape a whip
That performs its brutal dance
On the back of innocent humans?
Even today,
The barges of history and legends
Voyage across the pages
Of text books taught in the classroom,
Their sails fluttering
On their proud masts.
*Brutrasura was killed by Indra with a weapon made with Sage Dadhichi’s bones as per mythology.
Aswini Kumar Mishra has 13 poetry collections to his credit. He has been translated widely into English, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil and other Indian languages. He has authored a fiction in English, Feet in the Valley (Rupa Publications, 2016), His poems and essays have appeared in several literary journals including Indian Literature, Kavya Bharati, Wasafiri, M.P.T, The Little Magazine, Samakaleen, Konark, Rock Pebbles and Vahi etc. A recipient of several awards, he currently lives in Bhubaneswar and can be reached at cell phone +919438615742, +918456953936. His email id is: mishra.aswini53@gmail.com
Dr.Snehaprava Das, is a noted writer and a translator from Bhubaneswar, Odisha. She has five books of poems, three of stories and thirteen collections of translated texts (from Odia to English), to her credit.
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