On first glance, The warblers at Ibni Seem the perfect role-models For free birds. They bide amid the bamboo grove, They bicker among the hibiscus, One can't tell their home from their retreat, Their lodgings from their home. Are birds just so? So loving of generic trees, So unthinking of merit and mettle? It must be love! A most discerning love, Rejecting none, nor embracing one. But the trees? Theirs Is the humorists' love. Embracing all, em-bracing none. 7 June 2022
Poetry
The Balcony at Coorg | Ananya Dutta Gupta
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Crooning | Max Babi
By: Max BabiIf wounds could speak I’d be rustling like an autumn tree. If hurts could swell up, I’d be wriggling under stones. As it is, I croon in my dreams to lighten the cacophony of life.
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To Twilight by Suryya Kumar Bhuyan ( trans. Bijit Borthakur )
Who art thou, my beloved maid, With curling tresses leaning against The cloudless azure? Who art thou, the sentinel of the night, showing path Often with thy Lamp of stars to the weary travelers on their Homeward journey? Art thou…
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Guest by Jiban Narah ( trans: Lyra Neog Bora )
By: Jiban NarahFor coming to our home at the time of this bihu, I shall not give you my address Come looking for me to the village ‘alupura’ Ask anyone carrying a pitcher my whereabouts You can also ask those naked boys…
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Farewell by Jiban Narah (trans. by Lyra Neog Bora)
By: Jiban NarahOn the day our sister left our home She left an unbearable emptiness there For she loved to sing alone A room of her own was built The sad resonance of her singing scattered in the room hurts us now…
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Anecdotes | Sneha Subramanian Kanta
The barbed wire across the fence has always been as it is right since i was in the first standard it has gathered dust now and is rusting as the sands of time comfortably accumulate itself on the long metal…
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I have seen such a life by Rabindra Sarkar
By: Rabindra SarkarI have seen such a life That consumes itself to light To guide the probing men Of this sullen earth. I have heard a bird sing Not only in the spring, But on the hot summer noon That moves the…
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Failure : by Hiren Bhattacharyya
He is sitting sullenly, The pale night on his lap Like a child, just dead. Failure! I know not thy other names Thou may be a heap Of murky sky. Who knows, in which part of the sky, These pale…
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Tariquddin Ahmed : A Fine Voice by Krishna Dulal Barua
Of the soul-stirring melodies that have become indispensable constituents of Assamese culture, the ones that evoke an immediate atmosphere of tenderness and pathos, emerged from the wistful vocal efflorescence of Tariquddin Ahmed. The early twentieth century saw, along with the…
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Nature : by Chandra Kumar Agarwala
Blossoms bud forth into beauty, And scattering fragrant grandeur all around Glide but to the tomb. A humble-bee, lone and languorous, With thirst for manna-dew Flutters around the honey-cave. But alas! the loss wonderer And the wretched creature Turns away,…
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Waiting By Dinesh Goswami
By: Dinesh GoswamiYou wait You body scratched By the sun’s fingernails A violent was brewing in silence In what wordlessness hiding Memories of sorrow or joy And walk through the body Of one time to the other.
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Preparations Over… by Keshab Mahanta
By: Keshab MahantaI am living in the pain of a mature seed Deep in maternal penance Under the ground…. It’s the pain in which The whole of black Africa lives The blood-seed agog with a demonic life-flood, Whose possible sprouting takes the…
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The Barren One | Hari Barkakoti
In a spark rising from a stony passage Living life germinated as a geometrical point You awoke Looking at the crawling dance of hill snakes In the sub-tropical region of your unconscious self You were enchanted Gazing at the sharp…