After my return

Bharat Majhi

Translated by Sailen Routray

Christopher Flach's artwork 'The Dream' (1991)
commons.wikimedia.org/Christopher Flach

Please don’t desert the post 

even after my return,
stick to it. 

Please don’t throw 
the flowers away.
Does it really matter 
if they are fresh or stale?

Please open all my 
hidden, deserted dreams,
By embossing them.

Please invert 

all the lamps everywhere,

And stop hating the darkness.

Please face the sea 
without blinking,
And yet, 

do not hate the sky.

Please.

Please know the earth 
to be a humungous point,

Try and stay there.

Please wait 
for yourself,
And while doing so, 

please wake up!

Please remember, 

that I’ll return

to this only earth 

that there is.

Please remember 

that I’ll return,

because I have sown the path 

with mustard seeds,

Please remember that path. 

Note: The poet, Bharat Majhi (born in 1972 in Kalahandi), works in an Odia language media house in Bhubaneswar. He has published nine volumes of poems in a poetic career spanning more than three decades. Amongst other recognitions, he has won the Bhubaneswar Book Fair Award in 2008 and the Sanskriti Award in 2004.