Fish | Mahim Bora (trans. Krishna Dulal Barua)

Fish? golden silvery, fish? blue violet
Lustre of bright diamonds fish in millions
Coloured yearnings
Razor-slitting pace splitting the sea into halves
O’ irresistible!

With the flying fins
Shrouding even the sea’s wide expanse
Thwarting the summit-caressing waves
O’ eternal coloured yearning
Creation’s first offspring

Fish? golden silvery, fish? blue violet
Hued by birth hued by colours and
by innumerable deaths
In varied fish-traps
Nets, in the heart of the Ghiladhari,*
– yet immortal.
O’ fish o’ eternal fish

*Ghiladhari – a tributary of the Brahmaputra.

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.