Yuyutsu Sharma

The Flowers in their Baskets

The flowers in their baskets
do not smell of crisp  books
or rhymes that sing of flowers of freedom.

Pale as pulp of their wiped out eyes
these are stones of destiny
heavy from watery weight of their juvenile dreams

sharp and brash
as the stones of bleeding mule paths
tearing a wound with
face of a stifled cry
in murky skies of their fast fading infancy.

Translated from the Nepali by Yuyutsu Sharma

Laxmi Lekali

Laxmi Lekali
sister of our butchered dreams

Laxmi Lekali
the foolish cops who conspired

to dictate awe of your slogans
who plotted to smash the heightened pagodas

of your integrity
knew very little about consequences

of raping the urge of a flame.

Laxmi Lekali
the fragrance of your simmering sighs

tickles the battered
flowers drying in the books of my anguish.

Laxmi  Lekali
the urine that they forced you to drink

has erupted ulcers
of rage on my quaking shoulders.

Laxmi Lekali
raped daughter of our hungry huts,

forgive me,
my verbal revenge isn't enough

to remove leeches
of insult clung to your breasts.

forgive me,
rods of despotic boorishness

they thrust in to your private parts
have caused a crack in my skull.

Laxmi Lekali
I roam victorious

in the charred streets
of this city seething from

the scourge of your courses.

Laxmi Lekali
yours are the waves of milk

Laxmi Lekali
even the earth shook droplets of terror

to see the forced
nightmare of that monstrous orgasm.

Doom is the word
doom of someone who having raped

a complete little supernova
waits like some infested gorilla

for its lethal aftermath.

You my victorious Muse
my Laxmi Lekali,

your shrieks made
shimmering fishtail of Machhapuchhre shiver,

crevice torn open
by insane barrel of the gun,

a splash of blood
gushed forth and spread

like some violent energy
in the victorious skies of my smoldering eyes.

Translated from the Nepali by Yuyutsu Sharma

Awaiting a New Nation

From the porous ground
of a savage slope
ravaged by a landslide
they watch visitors
coming up the hill paths
like clouds rushing up
through the green folds of mountains
to race over the hunger of their huddled huts.

From the rickety shacks
of their makeshift schools
they wait for a guardian angel,
an evangelical promise, an official from an INGO
or a promise of a new God, an ideologue
or a Government official on a broomstick
to glide them through the famished skies of their wailing valleys.

Like spiders moving up
to possess the fragrant body of a white lotus
later in their sleep they will meet other visitors,
the gorillas of famed names and stenguns
pulling them from their black hair
to hurl these heroes into furious scripts
of epic battles in the name of charting
a course for a new nation already looking like
a delta of splattered blood vessels.

Translated from the Nepali by Yuyutsu Sharma

Bloodstains from Iraq

In the hands
of a black night

severed head
of a young Buddha

trying
to read its pallid

face's expression
in the pool of blood

shining
like a magical mirror

near its speechless torso. 

Translated from the Nepali by Yuyutsu Sharma

Yuyutsu Sharma

Recipient of fellowships and grants from The Rockefeller Foundation, Ireland Literature Exchange, Trubar Foundation, Slovenia, The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature and The Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature, Yuyutsu RD Sharma is a distinguished poet and translator.

He has published nine poetry collections including, A Blizzard in my Bones: New York Poems (Nirala, 2016), Quaking Cantos: Nepal Earthquake Poems, (Nirala, 2016),  Milarepa’s Bones, 33 New Poems, (Nirala, 2012), Nepal Trilogy, Photographs and Poetry on Annapurna, Everest, Helambu & Langtang (www.Nepal-Trilogy.de, Epsilonmedia, Karlsruhe, 2010), a 900-page book with renowned German photographer, Andreas Stimm, Space Cake, Amsterdam, & Other Poems from Europe and America, (2009, Indian reprint 2014) and Annapurna Poems, 2008, Reprint, 2012).

Yuyutsu also brought out a translation of Irish poet Cathal O’ Searcaigh poetry in Nepali in a bilingual collection entitled, Kathmandu: Poems, Selected and New (2006) and a translation of Hebrew poet Ronny Someck’s poetry in Nepali in a bilingual edition, Baghdad, February 1991 & Other Poems. He has translated and edited several anthologies of contemporary Nepali poetry in English and launched a literary movement, Kathya Kayakalpa (Content Metamorphosis) in Nepali poetry.

Two books of his poetry, Poemes de l’ Himalayas (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Poemas de Los Himalayas (Cosmopoeticia, Cordoba, Spain) just appeared in French and Spanish respectively.

Widely traveled author, he has read his works at several prestigious places including Poetry Café, London, Seamus Heaney Center for Poetry, Belfast, New York University, New York, The Kring, Amsterdam, P.E.N, Paris, Knox College, Illinois, Whittier College, California, Baruch College, New York, WB Yeats' Center, Sligo, Gustav Stressemann Institute, Bonn,  Rubin Museum, New York, Cosmopoetica, Cordoba, Spain,  Irish Writers’ Centre, Dublin, Columbia University, New York, The Guardian Newsroom, London, Trois Rivieres Poetry Festival, Quebec, Arnofini, Bristol, Borders, London, Slovenian Book Days, Ljubljana, Royal Society of Dramatic Arts, London, Gunter Grass House, Bremen, GTZ, Kathmandu, International Poetry Festival, Granada,  Nicaragua, Nehru Center, London, March Hare, Newfoundland, Canada, Gannon University, Erie, Frankfurt Book Fair, Frankfurt, Indian International Center, New Delhi, and Villa Serbelloni, Italy. 

He has held workshop in creative writing and translation at Queen's University, Belfast, University of Ottawa and South Asian Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany, University of California, Davis, Sacramento State University, California and New York University, New York.

His works have appeared in Poetry Review, Chanrdrabhaga, Sodobnost, Amsterdam Weekly, Indian Literature, Irish Pages, Delo, Modern Poetry in Translation, Exiled Ink, Iton77, Little Magazine, The Telegraph, Indian Express and Asiaweek.

The Library of Congress has nominated his book of Nepali translations entitled Roaring Recitals; Five Nepali Poets as Best Book of the Year 2001 from Asia under the Program, A World of Books International Perspectives.

Yuyutsu’s own work has been translated into German, French, Italian, Slovenian, Hebrew, Spanish and Dutch. He just published his nonfiction, Annapurnas & Stains of Blood: Life, Travel and Writing a Page of Snow, (Nirala, 2010). He edits Pratik, A Magazine of Contemporary Writing and contributes literary columns to Nepal’s leading daily, The Himalayan Times.

He was at the Poetry Parnassus Festival organized to celebrate London Olympics 2012 where he represented Nepal and India. Yuyutsu is the Visiting Poet at Columbia University, New York and has just returned from Argentina where had had gone to participate in International Poetry Festival, Buenos Aires.

Half the year, he travels and reads all over the world to read from his works and conducts creative writing workshop at various universities in North America and Europe but goes trekking in the Himalayas when back home.

More: www.yuyutsu.de, www.niralapublications.com

 

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