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A Few Poems of Rajib Borah
Impotent Words
For a couple of live stanzas
Where there is no bed for seedlings
I’ve sown there the grass of prose
In the world of hunger
The season crop is more in demand than poetry
A courage that defies death
Sprouts for the sake of life
The boy forced to leave his home
In search of a job loses his address
He may be none of our siblings but...
The rivers Luit, Khablu, Jiadhal
Know the sand kids use for making
Moons with cups made from coconut shells.
That sand fries the hearts of elders like popped rice
Here is no drinking water amid waters
He being an adolescent kept a flute in her heart
And went away in quest of water
In the desert front
She has not washed her shame
Since she was lost the riverine tune
Her eyes rove around when she goes out
Has a new shirt on a bicycle passed by the bend
Denying himself a homecoming even in Bohag
Only to save bucks for his wedding
The youth in silk cotton bloom
Come back in a coffin laid with ice
In the courtyard under the Ajar tree
The village stands downcast
The voice of poem stashed in the heart
Kept wailing for some hard prose
Impotent to make sense.
Translation: Nirendra Nath Thakuria
The Shadow of the City
I am dying for
A patch of sunshine
A waft of oxygen
Running after the sun and the wind
The long shadows of the street lights
O my dying Earth
I too have a little bit of claim
I have not come
You have born me brought me up
If you refuse to give I’ll keep silent
I know you are losing
The nails of high-rises are stained with
The blood of the raw hill
The de numbed hide is peeled off
With the frenetic drumbeats
The sky turns red blue crimson
The din of A.C.
The fainted breath under the hizal tree
The dry lips of asthmatic breath
.The smell of perfume drinks roasted meet
Fed up with bitter experiences of morning walks
I vomit up every day the happiness of the city
Sunshine and I keep looking
For each other
Junctions crossroads alleys lanes pavements bends
Tiny parks in the roundabouts
Somewhere a glimpse of the metallic hand
Grasping at the dumb throat of sunshine
Shooing away the pack of mongrels
Limps away the diabetic patient
With high pressure
A whiff of sunshine a puff of wind
No money to by
Translation: Nirendra Nath Thakuria
Father
The dead snake was fastened to a post
In the middle of the stream
In hope that
The snake would come back to life
And the current made the dead snake dance.
The quack also danced
To a different tune
Dreaming of draining out
Poison from the dead body
The poison carried by blood stream
Into the heart of my father
Pressed life out of him.
A song turned blue in pain
Tossed and groaned in the front yard.
Filtering the air of superstation
We run up from one village to another
In search of doctors who could heal.
And mantra was chanted
Still in the front yard.
A thousand eyes were fixed on the dead
In hope that he would rise
A fishing bird
Drowned by the weaves
Of the blue ocean.
He could not remain immortal
My father passed away
Putting on my adolescent shoulder
The burden of a sky.
Translation: Dr. Ananda Barmudoi
Distance
Of all the delicacies of the hospitable host we cherished
One member, the teenager sensed us his absence by his presence
He sat with us, of course, in the drowning room
While we bade adieu he was still captivated
Tapping the smart phone, asserting his non-presence.
The enthralling screen, the expanse of the net—
Its knots catch him, hanging him like a small fish
Numerous fishes like him caught him in the net
And hung in the air, sharing crazy remaks—likes-dislikes,
Turn the real unreal and unreal real.
They travelled in the unreal, knitting knots of nets
On which they hang, thread onto the lanes and slums alike,
Onto caves and tunnels and
All the restricted realms of life.
They shake of kins and bloods,
People shaking hands with him, hugging, caressing him,
Seem some unrecognized data to be sent to Recycle Bin.
Easy existence of people around him, their tears and smiles are
Foreign to the software fitted in him.
Where does lie the sanguine youth?
Truth to them is as documented by the net-pals.
But the nest-not the net is the safe shelter—
Not knowing this, the bird repeats the same mistake
May there be seven oceans full of water!
But there’s not a drop to drink-is known only
By the heart salted with pains.
Translation: Ramanandan Borah
Tree
The birds remained in the city
Through the trees departed
Thinking of the birds making nests on the roof
Some trees came to the city
Leaving behind the huts of the folks
Who deserted their hearth and home
The birds took to making their nest in city trees
Two hands with a dry heart
Planted trees as an advertisement
Only a palmful of water poured one day
The trees dried up
The load of the advertisement proved
Heavier then the Buddha’s preaching
Cleaving the city roads, digging the concrete courtyard
Through the tunnel in the ruined forest
The train is run
The whistle blew and died down
In the underground itself
The dwellers above heard nothing of it
Some trees planted for shade yielded fruit
The trees planted for fruit proved barren
Forest trees become posts of the four-post
Of
The hooks to fetch dreams
And one day the city went out
To call on the village
Crying the parched field cursed
The hill that blocked the clouds
Baring the barren womb
The rock-yielding hill said
Soil without trees is just soil
If rain and flood keep washing
How long will it take to erode
Translation: Nirendra Nath Thakuria
Celibacy
Prologue:
Childhood bewails, scourged in the incessant cascading ebb of tradition. An exasperating journey from mothers lap to the land. Pangs of life...consolation of fulfillment of life...I have seen the faces glimmering in the light emanating from that pillar that rises above the ordinary debate of meaning and meaninglessness. And I saw the painful faces of cow herding peers on the river bank in the morning. I saw the childhood hiding in the bushes of river bank, dragged by them to metamorphose them to monk. Bird that once was free, gnawed and screamed after tied to that rigid cycle of discipline. One day he fled away…then again the same cycle...one day I saw him as my classmate...clad in the attire of self diminution he was a complete stranger. His ways were resolved with firm vows.....How he stood firm while we all surrendered to the wind of youth like a plantain fore leaf of a tree...how indifferent is this world for those who are attuned to that cycle of discipline and customs after fighting the tide of the rock moss ocean of conflicts !!!
From afar is visible the lions
Faced each other, curved alive by unknown sculptor
Nails of rock pierced my awe stuck heart
Never I dared to ask that question
With panic-stricken voice
Why is the gate adorned with elephants instead of flowers.
The lord says-chanting of lord Krishnas name is Simha....
After I frittered without the warmth of love,
and accursed by the scourging heat of poverty
I had to embrace the devutter land ...
Fathers earning was too meager
to raise the family with seven children
Mother sisters and brothers
Transient are the power and pelf....
Thus grow the aides tender hand harder
Following the strange riddles fingers accustomed to the
graceful movement like a danceuse
That once wiped away mucus of nose...
Crawling and rolling on the rock and
silts like a handful of water straming through the tradition
Life destined for an eternal journey
Where is the sea
Where is the vow of that greater life sublime
For how many days cries the water hen in my heart
In my dream I saw the stripped horse obstructed the passage
Heard of emptying the earthen pot and then filling up it again*
Curse and accursed
Blessed...blessed with that surrender to lord Krishna and
dismissal of transient life of pleasure
Rock-moss ocean of self diminution
Invincible pillar of Brahma at the distant horizon
Mysterious tune flows from the flute
Epilogue:
I saw him that day
He dimissed the burden of his celibacy and
he tilted and harrowed his life with an epicurean thirst
Now he is a complete house holder thriving delicately
How are you ?
:Again the same voice of complaints, dissatisfaction
Which is so concealed and private
A bewailing pangs of unfulfiment writ large on his eyes
______________________________________________
*filling up earthen pot signifies being pregnant
Empting earthen pot signifies abortion.
Translateion : Bhaskar Jyoti Nath
About the poet:
Rajib Borah (1970) is an Associate Professor of Assamese Literature, Nazira College, in upper Assam. He has three collection of poems including Tatini Tirar Khela (2005), Dhou (2006), Panibhaona(2013) and Andharotu Phute Phoring (2017). He is a regular contributor to leading Assamese magazines like Prakash, Gariyashi, Prantik, Satsari. As a poet he dwells on rural life of Assam in macrocosm and the delicate and intricate feeling of an individual in microcosm. His poems are marked by skillful picturisation of the village life in its multiple spheres: its rich and colourful tradition and the challenge posed before it by modernisation, it’s natural beauty and the havoc caused by it, clash between the individual and the society and present day political scenario. His language is characterized by frequent use of colloquial words, phrase and idioms. He draws metaphors and similes from the local culture and history in such a way that it becomes imperative for the reader to have information about those references along with their reading. His other works include Vishwa Sahityar Porichoy, Asomiya Natya Parikroma Aru Sarikhon Asomiya Natak, Asomiya Kabita Aru Kotha Sahityar Avas, Chinta Porikroma, Sondhikhonor Asomiya Kabita - an anthology of Assamese poetry and Sat Samudrat Sankha Bajisene Nai, ed.
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