Always

Basudev Sunani

Translated by Sailen Routray

Photo Credit - commons.wikimedia.org/Marek Szczepanek

Till now,
what have I ever given to anyone?
My withering existence,
drops of intimacy,
incompetent footsteps,
or, for that matter,
grams of vanishing solidarity?

I have not been able 
to burn as wood 
in a deprived stove,
nor have I flowered 
as a pointless word
in a mouth long silenced.

I have been swimming around
like a tiny dream-laced fish
in a vanishing pond.

And I have been ruminating 
whether I should jump into the ocean
and give it immortality,
or should I dig down, 
and irritate the soft head 
of the snake 
that props up the world.

But 
at the most opportune moment of the play,
I get caught 
in the beak of the long-meditating heron.

Translator's Note: Basudev Sunani (b. 1962) is one of the foremost poetic voices of his generation in Odia literature. He has a body of prose in the form of novels, monographs and essays in the language as well.