Hit

Bharat Majhi

Translated by Sailen Routray

Top view of Kantanagar Temple, Bangladesh
Photo Credit: commons.wikimedia.org/Pinu Rahman

You said that the rivers 
that know the art of flowing, 
meet the ocean.
I replied,
the ocean does now know
how to flow.

You said that the sky holds up 
the ever moving horizon.
I replied,
the sky does not know
how to move.

You said that it is possible 
to kill one’s thirst with a drop of blood, 
or with a tongue-full of touch.
I replied,
even thirsts know 
of the science of rebirth.

You lectured at me
about existential solitude,
forgetting that I am yet to cease 
being a cascading waterfall of reverberations.   

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.