[Sickles]

© Jayanta Mahapatra
从: Bare Face
Kottayam: D.C. Books, 2000
录制: 2006, Literaturwerkstatt Berlin

Sickles

Dust seems in no hurry now, sailing

the air. A ten-year-old girl

runs after her home-bound cows

through the ingenious sunset hour,

glancing briefly as we pass by

but gives no sign that she has seen us.


The day’s last light

surprises us, leaving everyone

suddenly on an endless, desolate shore.

And a small desire to make love then.

Women returning home from fields of ripe grain

carry sickles in their tired hands.

The cut paddies cling to their quiet perches.


How little I understand myself,

among children who are mothers already

before the floods come, wetting the reeds on the shore;

among women desired, even as we are

indifferent to happenings by which they are possessed.


How the sickles shimmer with the reds of sunset

hidden in the twilight of their veins

Translated by Jayanta Mahapatra