Magician

Ramakanta Samantaray

Translated by Sailen Routray

Photo credit - A. R. Vasavi

Anything might happen today.

A butterfly may come and sit

on the flower drawn by me.

The golden oriole written

on my poetry notebook

may flap its wings

and fly to the mango tree in the backyard.

I am going

to fall asleep while staying awake.

There is a fly in the tea cup.

A mosquito on the left cheek.

Now intoxicated and groggy 

I sit cross legged

in your dream.

After opening a door

there is another one.

There is darkness on the other side.

A painted shawl

of all the stars of the night.

Listen,

I am that familiar magician of yours

in the closed room without any walls.

In my fist right now

I hold a fistful of dry wind.

See!

How, here, that wind

turns alive.

Note: The Odia original of this translated poem is sourced from the poetry collection 'Asaranti rekhachitra', published in 2022 by Bhubaneswar-based publication house Barsha Publication. The poet Ramakanta Samantaray, born in 1972, has studied painting at the Bibhuti Kanungo College of Art and Craft (Bhubaneswar), and Odia Literature and Language at the Utkal University (Bhubaneswar). His doctoral work was a meditation on contemporary theatre in Odia. With this combination of literature, language, and the visual arts, he has been constantly working to create hybrid narratives. Apart from being a painter, he has also published fifteen books, including collections of poems and short stories, and novels. He has written and published articles on art, artists, and monographs in Odia. He presently lives and works in Bhubaneswar.