Throughout the entire monsoon afternoon
My eyes sit upon the plinth
The afternoon sits on a tuft of grass
Beside this plinth of mine.
What’s it, all of a sudden
The flash of green lighting is fixed
On a tuft of grass
Beside my plinth
My vision freezes on the eyelids
In ecstasy!
In wonder!
In the caresses of the first night!
The stalls of beauty are many
Exhaustion gets over me
As I shop around the market;
Beside my plinth today
That form yields itself
Unsighted by any!
Coyness in the sullen despised eyes
In the concealment of the shrinking veil
This way beauty hasn’t for the first time
Peeped through the world’s chinks in the walls!
Beside my plinth today
The bliss of the world
Crowds within a couple of scribbled lines
Upon a frog’s slithery body.
Mahim Bora (6 July 1924 – 5 August 2016) was an Indian writer and educationist from Assam.He was elected as a president of the Assam Sahitya Sabha held in 1989 at Doomdooma. He was awarded with most notably with the Padma Shri in 2011, the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2001 and the Assam Valley Literary Award in 1998. Assam Sahitya Sabha conferred its highest honorary title Sahityacharyya on him in 2007.
Krishna Dulal Barua is a teacher of English language and music. He has been consistently translating poetry, fiction and non-fiction from Assamese to English. His translations have appeared in the Sahitya Akademi’s bi-monthly journal, Indian-Literature, Chandrabhaga, Indian Review, poetryinternational.org, the UK- based literary journal ‘Modern Poetry in Translation’, nezine.com and others. His published books of translation includes Selected Poems of Nilmani Phookan, The Sword of Birgosri (novel), Blossoms of Harmony (lyrics of Dr Bhupen Hazarika) all published by the Sahitya Akademi, Select Poems of Lakshminath Bezbaroa, published by the National Book Trust etc. He has to his credit two books on music, a collection of articles, ‘Contours’ and a collection of poems, ‘On and on’. He received the Katha Award for Translation in 2005.
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