}} ONE DAY by Pravasini Mahakud |

Poetry at Sangam

SangamHouse

 










ONE DAY by Pravasini Mahakud

Translated by K. Satchidanandan

One day, after many days, months and years,
You will come across a woman’s bare skeleton
What would her expression be like
Would she be laughing or crying
Will she be passionately gazing into eternity —
Into someone’s else’s expectations?
Will it glisten with a half-smile or cry?
She will be unknown, hard to have an argument
about her identity at this stage,
But on serious examination one will find,
once upon a time a bird used to flutter within this nest,
and it took in the last bit of light –
-soul and flew up to the sky
Yes, this skeleton did have a mind
and if it did it have, it must have been happy:
it must have been sad,
it must have written poetry;
it must have done many other things, if it indeed had a mind
Yes, there was passion within the skeleton,
from the surface of certain bones
even now a poem springs out in an obscure tongue
Even now, after thousands of years, love brightens the whole skeleton:
Yes, these bones are soft, utterly soft
One wonders how the fire spared it;
rivers failed to carry it in its currents.
Above all how time’s horrendous tempest failed to lift it,
break into pieces?
Even sorrows could not melt its marrow.
It lay here bound by an invisible love for something.
Dark forces imprisoned in its spirits,
grief could not disrupt its consciousness
No season could weaken its stoic indifference,
Disease, longing, lust: nothing could pulverize this body of bones.
The whole of last night,
This skeleton sat with me;
In the morning my bed seemed colder than ice.
Now it is difficult to know whether this skeleton emerged from me or
I emerged from the skeleton.

 

PRAVASINI MAHAKUD