Poetry at Sangam

SangamHouse

 










GUERNICA by Kunwar Narain, translated by Apurva Narain

I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them

                  —Picasso

How arduous
to restore in a painting 
a mangled face 
         to exactly what it was before,
to piece together
the shattered pieces
and re-create them
         as they were before. 
 
Better to raze the ruins
and from the rubble
         create something anew…
 
An eye was saved
in it some light
         some signs of life in the light
 
In the teeth clinging to lips
still clung a laughter
         child-like
 
In the tattered geography of a face
between two ears open like windows
a ten percent nook for the mind’s situation
         was disconcerting
 
A nose could be pulled and straightened 
up to the length of a tongue
         but not raised
 
The rest of the body
was a mauled-up frame under the head— 
that instead of being put right there 
could be put from any to anywhere
         to salvage what remained…
 
All in all
the unquiet picture that emerged
from the peril of an apocalypse
         could always be 
         of a being 
         and also of a world.


First published in Modern Poetry in Translation

Excerpted from Witnesses of Remembrance: Selected Newer Poems, trans. Apurva Narain, Eka, Westland, 2021


Audio recording of GuernicaDownload


KUNWAR NARAIN, TRANSLATED BY APURVA NARAIN