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At the end of everything
There’s a beginning
At this very beginning
The river of sorrow
Deposits silt
On either shore of my heart
When the green valley
Embraces tenderly
The dismal hues of seasons
I listen intently
To the … [Read the rest...] “Beginning | Rabindra Bora”
Within this dark shell
All emptiness is substantial
The sky and the earth reach me
In all elastic opacity.
Severely sensuous is this mystic opacity
A self-indulging hermaphrodite god
The earthworm told me; the leech confided.
Self-indulgence begets nightmares
Bonny … [Read the rest...] “Ratnakara | Navakanta Barua (trans.)”
Cloistered
The fossil heaved its stony sigh
Moaning:
God’s failures have caused,
All his tears to helpless man.
(First published in 1970)
The Gloom
Last night
Someone poured ink into Umiam
How the streetlights emitted darkness!
The whole day the … [Read the rest...] “Cloistered, The Gloom, Tete-a-tete (3 poems) by Navakanta Barua (trans.)”
Roots
Why do the roots, born in the sky
Thirst for the soil?
On moonlit nights
I keep gazing
At the oldest fig
In Haiku’s hamlet. What enormity!
Clutching on to the fig
I suspend myself as a bat
And … [Read the rest...] “Roots | Prayag Saikia ( trans. Krishna Dulal Barua)”
To Dusk (Sandhiya)
Who art thou, my beloved maid,
With curling tresses leaning against
The cloudless blue? Who art thou, showing path
To the way-worn travelers
With thy Lamp of Stars on their
Homeward journey? Art thou a goddess
That … [Read the rest...] “To Dusk | Suryya Kumar Bhuyan”
The Prelude to Creation
On that day of destruction
You took in your hand, my lord,
Your terrible lyre!
There was nobody joyous that day,
Even the sun and the moon were silent:
Across the horizon there suddenly flashed
Sighs … [Read the rest...] “The Prelude to Creation | Suryya Kumar Bhuyan”
Much have I wandered far and wide
And uncovered Nature’s canopy
Of her beauteous forms. But far above
Sparkles, the ambrosial epistle of my love
The wafted muse of poet’s bower may bloom,
That enraptures humankind far and near;
But … [Read the rest...] “A Letter from My Beloved | Hemchandra Goswami”
Hymn To Man
Individuals grow and weather, and grow again
The race never ends but continues forever
The human race is mysterious
Why call man mortal?
Devote yourself entirely to the service of man
Man must feel for man and … [Read the rest...] “Hymn to Man | Chandra Kumar Aggarwala”