Questions and answers

Ramakanta Samantaray

Translated by Sailen Routray

Palmas Gate, Badajoz, Spain (2020)
Photo credit: commons.wikimedia.org/Diego Delso

The sky again looked clear.

But by then 

following the dark clouds,

the day's sun had returned

along with the nomadic birds.

The crape jasmine in the courtyard

looked so weepy

that to make it stop

I ended up crying.

And my crying!

It's a thing to watch.

For my home and family,

for love and betrayals 

I have never cried. 

I have never even cried for you.

Have I?

In this thicket of the world

there were so many reasons to cry,

even then, I had never cried, not even once.

The star that has left its home early, alone, 

alone in its eagerness, 

before the evening will ask,

"Why did you cry then?"

By the time I would have looked 

for an answer in a hurry,

it would be pitch dark.

Smiling, white flowers

would have showered themselves on the pinwheel 

that looked weepy an hour earlier.

In the crowded market of stars

filling up the sky

that lonely star would have forgotten its question.,

On this side, 

while carefully opening up the knot on my waist,

my answer would also have been slowly lost. 

 

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.