Kalidas Mishra 

Translator

I have seen Murali Meher playing his flute
at the confluence of river Mahanadi and river Tel ; 
the deep notes from his mad flute glide past
through the dust-laden wind ; 
they seem like the white puffy clouds dancing their way to far –off lands, 
they seem as if the current of the river is all ears for the melodious flute; 

Murali Meher plays the flute on his chapped frost-bitten lips, and
the darkness deep asleep on the forest-fires 
descends down to the sands of the river
with her anklets, and a romance 
of song and dance pervades the wind, melody from flute. 

Truth is 
Murali Meher’s mad flute is 
like the dance of a wanton young girl 
on the sands of the river 
and there is this life composed in harmony
of the song and the melody, 
and deception is 
the name of the story of the flute
and the anklet dying alone, 
bereft of each other; 

Murali Meher wakes up from meditation, 
from the exuberance of his song ; 
a dark-skinned dog licks clean the rice he had begged; 
you bitch, howls Murali Meher and uses
the flute as a stick to chasten the dog; 
the dark-skinned dog barks, and sobs, and 
the broken flute stops making music, 
like Murali Meher’s silent sorrow; 

just wait for a while, dear friends, 
Murali Meher will be back with his flute; 
and he will complete the last few lines of my poem, 
composed of the barking of a dark-skinned dog, 
and the sorrow of a broken flute. 

I will tell you a story
with only you and me in the backdrop, 
a story where I am there, and 
there is a little hint about your departure
shortly from the scene; 

you read my destiny against 
the backdrop of the story, 
like the ashes , still hot and shimmering, 
and your absence, glowing red
like the pale void of a banyan tree
that had just been struck down; 

I ponder over the story, 
the blood flows in the arteries 
like the numberless streams of a river gone red, 
and you come back with the ebb tide, 
your eyes glow like the silvery ‘Hilsa’fish 
very eager to tell our story; 

at the outset of the story you have 
only darkness, dense darkness, 
the plot line filled with iron nails, 
splinters of glass, drawings etched in blood, 
feathers of dead pigeons and peacocks; 
there inside the story you have a dense, 
dark forest, endless bickering and quarrels, 
and a tear-soaked destiny that has lost its way; 

I know not if I am telling the story, 
or, am only a part of it; 
I know not if you are listening
to the story, or just a part of 
the sinful darkness inside it, 
for now I feel as if the entire world 
is like a paper globe 
on your joint palms. 

(1) 

I am on the stage 
to sing a song that is
like the pecks of 
a woodpecker on a drumstick tree, 
like the earthen pot of rice
on a cold hearth, 
like the song composed of
the orphaned cries of babies 
snatched from their mothers’ breasts, 
like the song of 
a bundle of rib-bones
in the scorching sun, 

I have indeed filtered a few, rare 
astonishing lines, a few life-breaths
of a song from a pile of corpses
for you to listen. 

(2) 

Yes, there is this hollowness of a waste land, 
the front yard of a black mountain of boulders, 
the long, fragile past of a dead jungle of ‘forest-fires’, 
the moss-eaten, spectral belly of a billion hungry souls, 
a precariously held , half-dead lotus
budding from the womb of a dry well, and with that , 
a flicker of a rare song deep inside the lotus. 

(3)

No, this is not my song, 
nor am I singing it ; 
the spark of this song only burns me, and 
what rings like a song to you is 
only the smoldering smoky remains of my soul.