'Prayer' by Bhanuji Rao

Translated from the Odia original by Sailen Routray

Painting - 'Palm Trees at Bordighera' (1884)
Painter - Claude Monet (1840-1926)
Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons

Oh Ishwara! 

May I be granted a fever -
please make me rave,
burn me;
may the mandala of my face
turn pale, yellowish and sickly.
 
I will lie face down on the bed –
like the shadow of a palm tree,
that falls on the edges of a field,
burnt with the sun;
completely tired.
 
Oh Ishwara! 
May I be plagued with diseases.
The restlessness that’s boiling over,
may all that, take the final rest,
with me.
 
While sleeping
I will watch the fleeting birds,
and the momentary cloud
that kneels over a pond breathless
to see its reflected face.
 
May I burn,
may I receive pain;
pour winter onto my bones
oh Lord!
 
He’ll come dreading
the effects of a ripe dejection
and would ask,
“Why is it,
that you didn’t call me earlier?
Don’t you know
what’s good for you?”
 
Oh Ishwara!
Please fill my body
with tens of hundreds of summers!
 
Let it come near me,
at least for once;
as a lonely dove cooing
on the branch of a tree of heaven.
He is perhaps longing like me
to get a whiff of the familiar hair

near his chest.

Note: Bhanuji Rao (1926 - 2001) was an Odia poet born in Cuttack. He worked as a journalist and teacher, working as a language instructor at LBS National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, for seventeen years. His work as a poet (along with that of other pioneers such as Guruprasad Mohanty) was crucial in the transformation of Odia poetry in the post-independence period. He was quite belatedly honoured with the central Sahitya Akademi award for his collection 'Nai Aarapaari' - 'On the Other Shore' in 1989. He was the grandson of famous Odia poet Madhusudan Rao, and never married. 

Copyright of the English translation rests with the translator.