BRAHMOTRI MOHANTY
MOSS
My feet slipped in the yard,
too much of moss there.
So what if I fell down ?
Ashamed ?
What should I be ashamed of ?
It's natural to fall.And there is glory
in getting up.
Some are smiling as if their feet
haven't slipped ever
on this moss.
Scrub you may hard and often,
it grows again, this moss :
to grow is its nature,
and nothing can make it vanish.
Of course, I should have been careful
while walking down the yard.
That would have spared me
such a big fall.
My hands and feet are injured.
In the unhurt body
this injury is not much.
Soon it will heal, the ache
may last till tomorrow.
The scar will remain for sometime,and
gradually it will merge into my skin.
After my fall, I hope you will be cautious
as you walk from this side to that,
you've to move very slowly, you know,
pressing your feet to the ground.
And if you slip even after that
I must say you didn't move with caution,
only faked to do so.
Mark these three words : moss, fall and caution;
inevitably linked they are.
If you take them together and infer a meaning,
it's of some use, otherwise
you will continue to slip-and-fall, again and again,
and take in its pain.
Translation :
Rabindra K Swain
THE POET
Someone makes me write with my hand in his,
His breath in my experience,
his breathing warm in my ears.
Yet do I know what gets written on this paper?
Intoxicated as I am then by that ecstatic closeness,
I live on in my own amazement.
But realization makes me aware then
That he isn't there; where then is the delight
of his touch ?
Merely he has written a poem and left it behind,
A poem resembling a poem,
For me to be the poet of the poem.
Translation :
Jayanta Mahapatra
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