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A few poems of Nilima Thakuria Haque
The Abortion
The bed does not speak
The bed of unspoken words
Pain congealed on the cold metal bed
Where dreams lie with broken faces.
She had climbed up
On steps of broken glass
From love towards loveless bed
Towards these gloved hands.
A foetus wails in sorrow
Slipping down the canal
The other cry climbs up
From the bowels below the navel
Clutching at her heart.
Who knows how
What has been shed today
Will snap away at her
All her life
The lonely way of a foetus.
Nor that anything can
Be said today at all
The gloved hands whisper close
Everything is in order
In order the unspeaking bed
The tidy grave of passion
Under society’s alarmed gaze.
The girl lies drowned
In blood scoured out of her uterus.
Translated by: Dr. Hiren Gohain
There were mistakes galore
There were mistakes galore
The woman drowns
Under stress of sanctimony
She’s no Rajanighanda though
For one slighted dream
Suffers the night’s body
Breaking through
The white garb of snow
The assertion of blood
Thorns prick, flowers bloom
The young widow’s breasts thaw
In the wings behind the whiteness
Preparations for an unburning Sati.
Translated by: Pradip Acharya
Hatching
The woman of earth in the throes of labour
The night’s deep voice
Clings, a dewdrop
To her whole body
The bed of earth is spattered with pain.
In the bronze moonlight
She peels herself off in layers
The pain in her graceful body
Lingers on the frame of her bones.
In solitude
Time falls off in clusters.
When the wind ails in the smell of rotten eggs
Her bones bloom into Rajanigandhas
The nest of night moans in the warmth of pain.
How enchanting is the raga in the depths of the night !
The sun’s seeds of hope fret in labour
The graceful sweep of light.
The scarlet ballad of the earth.
Translated by: Atreyee Gohain
Here the Plucking is over
Here the Plucking is over
The sigh of the wilting leaves are awake,
Guarding the bare stems
Of these stunted tea bushes.
And she sleeps in the dry basket
Amid the fallen leaves.. Naked Still.
She was quite like a cup of tawny red tea,
A simple, full-blooded young labour girl
Loathe to walk the distance
From the Jhumur fields to the chang- bungalow
That was her only crime.
Those hutments that kept falling asleep
To the wine and the drum beats
Had no inkling
Of the blood smeared on her pale lips.
Pierced and sundered, the tender leaves of her breast,
And, an unbearable aloneness.
Now she sleeps here, under the siris,
Her bluish lips
Colder than the icy table in the post-mortem hall.
The pale moonlight heavy with speechless anguish,
Here the plucking is over.
Translated by: Liza Das
THE WITCHES’ FOLIOS
(“Double, double toil and trouble
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.” – Macbeth, William Shakespeare)
First Folio:
At the hour of dark
The black cat awakes, stretches herself,
And wails.
When the barn owl hoots from the Satiyan tree
On the enclosing ridge
She sits up, her hunger, too, rises
The overflowing hunger of the witch…
The session in the front-yard
And the backyard agony
Gnaw into the growing moon
Adages, proverbs are incorporeal
But leave substantial shadows around
Shadows the beads of his sweat
Shadows his chest where golden crops sprout
It shadows the yard
Swept and mopped with her sweat
Where the zephyr blows at will
The hut where moonlight cascades down
Invites the spite of edifices around
After a lingering drag at the hookah
Lets out billowing dark smoke
In the fuddled darkness
The headless trunks spy
Haughty capering will-o’-the-wisp
By the antique pond behind the hut
People or just whisperings?
Can’t make out anything in the dark
Just hooting like owls
‘Witch, witch…’
The guileless hut writhes in agony
In the cauldron of the moonless night
Simmers the darkness.
Second Folio
Lance, spear, yoke and ploughshare of darkness
The village folk are ploughing darkness
Making furrows in her body
Strange ways of familiar simple folk
Make the witch shin up the tall bamboo
As she forgets to wail
The startled scream of pain and slight
Dares not cross the narrow path
Through the surrounding woods
Yet, many a day, had she cut across
This very dreaded path
Disdaining the various ghosts and bats
Dangling from the tangled stems of darkness
Even the eddies in the river came forth
Appealed to by darkness
Bedazzled by her glowing body
She remained beyond reach
Eddies and whirlpools, you’d better know
It was she who had eased the pain
The straining heart of the old woman
Of the drying breasts
The lone light glowing the night long
By the ailing bed of village folk
All that is forgotten
For, in some eyes, even during the day
Darkness grows abundantly, in clusters
Touch her this time, whirlpool will you?
Wrap her round with water
And take her to the river instead
Third Folio:
It is on page three of newspapers
That would she trot
Her ‘spa’-friendly tresses streaming loose
Letting desire flow in torrents
While her garden of long nails
Hides the stale clots of blood
Her enticing cat walk
Makes the carpet grass sway
On a thousand young chests
But the mystery in the lips
Daubed in blood stays put
The star shines on page three
Taking the destitute child in her lap
Planting a kiss on the forehead.
Two beads of shining compassion
Glow in bold italics.
Behind tributes of ‘terrific’, ‘unprecedented’
The slender hands draw designs
On the back of the working children
The garden of nails sways
In the stifled helpless cries
Even in page three, life gallops
The overflowing hunger of the witch.
Translated by: Pradip Acharya
About the poet
Nilima Thakuria Haque (1961) is an artist and a leading poet in Assam. Her collection of poetry include Puharato Andharaoto (In The Light And In Darkness, 1999), Hridayar Chitrapat (Canvas Of Heart, 2001), Bhalpuwa, Bishad Aaru Dhulir Stabak (Verses On Love, Sadness And Dusts, 2005), Kiba Paharila Neki (Did You Forget Something, 2008), Surgeon Aaru Meghbor (The Surgeon And The Clouds, 2012 and Duporia Tu Ekhon Nodi Hol (The Noon Turns Into A River, 2017). A professional Gynaecologist, she has also written Doctoror Diary in 2003 and also published one novel, Jalarekha (Lines on Water, 2007).
She has attended National Workshops for Women Writers, Udaipur (2003) , SAARC Conference of Writers & Intellectuals Delhi(2007), North East Poetry Festival, Guwahati (2007), National Poets’ Meet, Sahitya Akademy Bokakhat ( 2007), National Poets’ Meet, Sahitya Akademy, Mumbai (2011), SAARC Conference of Writers and Intellectuals, Agra (2013), National Poets’ Meet, organized by Sahitya Akademy and Bodo Sahitya Sabha, Guwahati (2013), National Poets’ Meet, Sahitya Akademy, Vishakhapatnam(2014), National Poets’ Meet, Sahitya Akademy, Imphal (2016) and National Poets’ Meet, Sahitya Akademy, Vijaywada(2017).
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