Arjun Das

Date of Publish: 2023-10-03

A few Poems by Arjun Das

The Noon

I was lying down

with the little one

in a summer noon

 

A black coloured electric fan

was moving continuously

over our heads

 

I understood

the muffled voice of the little one

and the language of her two eyes

 

I do not know

what the little one saw in me

 

The black-coloured electric fan

clearly saw in my two eyes

two mad horses ready for race

and a stone inside

too heavy to be lifted

 

I became a

helpless and failed guardian

 

The murky mechanical fan

laughed at me endlessly

In the raucous laughter

there were floating

my perpetual disgrace and failure

 

The Horse

In the park of the town

she was sitting quietly

clasping my right hand.

 

At a distance

there was a weary horse without owner

as though a fellow

of a vanquished soldier.

 

Amidst the lush green

the tears of the cheerless horse

looked to her eyes

and wetted the ground.

 

She came closer to me

and declared in a soliloquy

I will wake up the stony horse

with my ancient power.

 

Since that day

I have a strong desire

to be the leant horse.

 

Farmer poet

 

I know of a farmer poet

who lives on the river bank

 

From the soil tilled by his plough

he seeks out his alphabet

keeping awake the whole night

he writes down

the endurance of the dyke

and the anger of the tide

 

Trampling down the cornfield

the river comes to his yard

and wants to read his rhymeless verse

 

I know that farmer poet

whose final abode is the river

 

Centreless

The Peripheral towns

miles away from the centre

surround the lonely beings.

 

Whose lifeless sighs are these?

As though they are

the laments of dust gone astray

 

An indelible borderline grows up

inside the centreless people

 

What do the centreless people want?

Another Centre .

Natural

In the night

that gives birth to stillborn Children

the lifeless stars

fall off one by one

on the rugged soil

 

Even bearing with

all the disgraces

the new moon

comes into life

in the tears of darkness.

 

Rain-2

The two eyes of the night

washed clean by the rain

are quite sleepless.

 

The night is melting down

like rain drops

and is taking roots right there.

 

We embraced

even the tiny drops

like thirsty soil

 

And thus, l became

a plot of moist soil

and you a flowing river.

 

The Border

 

Perching on the barbed wire of the border

two birds of the two sides

keep singing

and are lost in union

Then the barbed wire melts

and comes down as heavy rain

on either side of the border.

 

Fire

Far away in the distance

there is a fire.

My sleeping eyes

have woken up just now.

This sleep of mine

belongs to my previous birth.

 

The Captive

We do not see

the shackless of captivity,

neither feel nor can touch it.

 

Yet we all know

we are captives

inside ourselves.

 

Captivity follows us

we too follow it

and amidst that

we look for a way

to be an effectual captive.

 

(Translated from Assamese into English by Sadiqul Islam)

About the poet :

Arjun Das (1986 ) was born in Kalaigaon of Udalguri district in Assam. He is a Masters in Assamese Literature. A promising bilingual poet and a teacher by profession, he writes in Assamese and Bengali languages. His poems have been published in a number of renowned literary magazines. He has two collections of poems to his credit-- Bhokar Ishwar(in Assamese) and Gham-Joler Dhan(in Bengali). He is awarded Gojali Youth Poet Award, 2016

He can be reached at [email protected]

About the translator :

Sadiqul Islam (1969 ) is an Associate Professor at the English Department in Moirabari College, Morigaon. He is a Masters in English Literature from Guwahati University and currently pursuing his doctoral research. He translates from Assamese to English. His translated works have been published in a number of reputed journals including Indian Literature. He has one collection of translated poems to his credit titled One Hundred Poems of Harekrishna Deka, published by Papyrus, Guwahati. He can be reached at [email protected]