TRANSLATED FROM HINDI BY TARIKA
Translation
People are moving away –
(everyone from everyone else) –
People are moving away
And it increases
the ‘space’ around me!
This ‘space,’ I will not translate
As ‘expanse’ but as ‘universe,’
Because in this,
I have released a flying saucer.
I thank time
Because my watch is at rest
Thanks to the window
Because just behind its bars,
A sparrow is pregnant!
Thanks – to everyone, whoever, wherever,
Because in this moment, everything is assimilated in me
A bit of me is in everything
My empty home rings out!
like a harmonium out of tune.
There is a lot of work
In this ‘free’ time.
I will have to translate
All the layers, the house has shed
Into the language of water
Then I will translate,
the dirty plates,
Into petals of some white flower
Then I will ponder awhile
Will I ever be able to translate
A sink full of soapsuds
Into any raag?
Actually, I want to translate
This whole house
Into another language
But where will I find that other language
Except the language
That my children speak?
Before I know it, evening will have arrived
And I will translate this evening
Only as much as to get up –
And open the curtains!
The last scattered rays of the light
Will instantly fill up
All the space
And then I will translate it
Not as ‘universe’ but as ‘expanse’ –
Only expanse!
Door
I was a door
The more I was knocked,
The more I opened
Those who came in witnessed –
The expansive, spinning wheel*–
When the millstone stops, the spinning wheel turns,
When the spinning wheel stops, the scissors-needles begin,
Fundamentally, something or the other
Is perennially spinning, in orbit!
…And in the end, the broom sweeps over everything –
Sweeps up the stars,
Sweeps the mountains, trees, stones –
All the broken and tattered scraps of her world
It collects in a basket
Somewhere in the depths of the heart!
The Kitchen
She rolls out the rotis like it’s the earth.
Volcanoes roll over mountains.
Earthquakes roll over houses.
Silences roll over words; low tides, the sea.
Every morning,
She puts a kindling in the sun
And gives it a new flame
She rolls out rotis like it’s the earth.
The Earth – itself a ball of dough –
Has been placed
In the hands of the sun
Completely in its hands,
to take, roll it out, to cook,
just like the bees cook the honey,
under the shade of their wings.
The whole city is silent,
All the utensils in the kitchens have been washed clean.
The embers of each last stove have died out,
And she,
Standing in front of the heat of her own self,
In the sudden rush
Covering herself
Kneading herself again and again
Is happy that she can roll out the rotis as round as the earth.
Also read, Poems by Prabhu Rajgadkar, translated from Marathi by Paromita Goswami, and published by The Antonym.
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