Ruksana’s letter
Perhaps moonlight
died in the gloom of your burka—
Eid's full Moon.
Ruksana, at this moment
what could I send you except these words?
While placing
the morsel of bread in your mouth
or reading words
of Koran, the fire may drop
from the sky
and your dream—
it might catch fire.
The Mosque may sink in
even before the Allah's
sacred name is uttered
and there may rise
smoke of sands from within.
The red rose you planted
in your courtyard,
the abstract painting
you stuck on the wall
the one you loved
more than your life
or your colorful hanky
that you so painstakingly
embroidered, might just vanish…
after April, 2003 AD.
Ruksana
Before it turn into history
the poem for you.
Translated from the Nepali by Yuyutsu Sharma
March 27, 2003
In the fast fading blood
has been drenched the empty vacuum flask,
the lost ring
and the ladyfinger close by
has been blown off by the bullet.
Under the merciless sun
in a sea of seething sands
are swimming corpses of our troops.
From my nameplate
stuck on my chest dangles
a fierce fighter,
I, John Hawkins.
Probably I would never
ever return to pay off my son's school fees
or eat the chunk of cheese cake
I left behind on the table in hurry.
That unknown black marine
roasted in the fire along
with the empty medals of bravery.
On my pendent hanging
On my chest the bloodstained Christ
locusts of dynamite
spreading far off and lost in its flames
the photograph of my teenage son.
The orders that descended
like a revelation from the sky.
On March 27, 2003
there rose a wave of sand dunes
and all along from my gun
roared notes of my obituary.
Translated from the Nepali by Yuyutsu Sharma
My mother and I
Every morning
my mother looks into
the other end of the sky
and says— Look son,
even last night sky got aflame.
I do not understand a thing.
What I do understand is—
in the sky reside
the deities my mother worships.
in the sky there lies the moon
which God has made.
And then in the same sky
there are stars that shine
like necklace of nine golden beads.
From the sky itself
God pours the waters
and from the same sky drop
hailstones scattered by Lord's might.
As the sun rises in that sky
my mother's face blooms
and along with setting sun
my mother's face droops…
It looks as if
by constantly facing the burning sky
my mother has become a naked sky.
I see on creases of her eyelids
millions of skies, moons, stars
and water drops displayed in profusion.
I am shorter in height, a mere pigmy
can't reach up to her eyes to look
into my mother's eyes,
can't wipe water drops
and hailstones from her eyes.
Lighting two candles,
I can only make a prayer;
do not put sensibilities aflame.
do not char color of this earth.
It blisters the face of the sky
and my beloved mother's.
Translated from the Nepali by Yuyutsu Sharma