FOUR CLUBS, THREE ACES AND A JOKER AND OTHER POEMS— MOHAN RANA

TRANSLATED FROM THE HINDI BY MOULINATH GOSWAMI 

AN ORDINARY DECEMBER DAY

The present a shadow of the past
The afternoon 2 degrees, and inert with dampness
I try to erase but my shadow does not obliterate

And future is that past
which is yet to happen
I’ve kept the afternoon shadows hidden in my soles
I’ve laid the blueprint flat before me
But in this game of cross and circle I’m playing against me
taking my mask off and changing the pieces,
Me the narrator of intermission

I walk the road in tandem with the past of the future
At times I sit on some bench
I wonder as I see that this is my future
It used to be

the past that passes before me
so long as I keep my eyes closed

FOUR CLUBS, THREE ACES AND A JOKER

Even before I shuffle the cards, you know
four clubs, three aces and one joker
appear to tell me with their oblique smile
they have already revealed
what I have, what I do not have in my hands
Yet I keep hoping
this game of cards is being played according to the rules

The trains that were to arrive today,
their time had long elapsed
Every passenger who was to arrive departed long back
Perhaps I turned up late
or perhaps the trains to my destination were not there now
All I heard now was a long-drawn coarse crooning
that continued to resonate in the shadows of the ridges of my words
The weaver of thoughts
was there no more in the radiance of that lingering murk

Yet I keep playing this game of cards amidst your absence,
A wind that shivers the skin coat betwixt a startling sunshine
tests my shrivelled shadow
Thinking to myself, this body will not remain with me in future,
the one I stare at for long, standing in one corner of the station
this delay perhaps is there in some time table

Also, read Suspected Poems Book Review by Shubha Sundar Ghosh published in The Antonym

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