The sculptor
Bharat Majhi
Translated by Sailen Routray
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Interior of the main hall of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw
Photo Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/ Wojciech Kryński |
It does not pay to blame the butterfly.
Especially since, friends,
it is not as if
I would become a garden someday!
So kindly desist from giving me
advances for making statues;
as I do not have
even a couple of palmfuls of soil
after the division of the land.
I had earth
that could have become statues
of gods and goddesses;
objects of affection and reverence.
But I thought that for me
all the gods have died.
Therefore,
that land has been sold.
Have not you seen?
At the same place
a lush garden has grown.
I do agree that
my skills don’t lie in cooking,
or for that matter in gardening.
But you just might get two tight whacks
if you raise the matter of the statues.
Therefore, friends!
It is prudent to desist!
If you have to say something,
then let’s talk about the earth,
about the tears that have been shed,
and offer each other lovely platitudes
about the beauty of the earth.
Tears matter,
till the time they inhabit
the universe of the eyes.
Why search for them in the dust
after they drop?
I don’t say that this earth is pretty
after seeing your idiotic gardens;
if I might have,
then the question of the butterflies
could have been raised legitimately.
Hence dear friends!
Let’s face the bland fact
that I won’t make statues any longer.
But it will be nice,
if you could come at least once a year,
talk some random jazz,
shed a few wayward tears,
and bitch about the idiocy
of gardens in general.
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.
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