Chest

Ramakanta Samantaray

Translated by Sailen Routray

The tower of the Cathedral of Saint Domnius, Split, Croatia
(as seen from the Vestibule of Diocletian's Palace)
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons/Sumit Surai

You are telling me

to turn into a stone.

I won't.

I can't bear such hardness.

I can't break apart

again and again.

Turn me into a handful of soil.

A stone

under the harsh sunshine.

Dew

with the night's touch.

I'll become soil. 

I will become whole

after having broken apart.

Note: The Odia original of this translated poem is sourced from the poetry collection 'Patha Asaranti', published in 2005 by Athena Books (Brahmapur). 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.