The sculptor

Bharat Majhi

Translated by Sailen Routray

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.