Issue: Vol. V, No. 1, May-July, 2026
The Peasant
Who’s always there under the open sky?
The peasant.
Whose feet has the soil underneath?
The peasant’s.
What’s sweeter than mother’s milk?
The peasant’s sweat.
Where do even the vicissitudes of fortune come to a standstill?
In the plough’s furrow.
When will the shattered lives of the earth
Rise up again?
When the arid soil
Gets split apart by the ploughshare.
The herdsmen
Like us, the herdsmen
Going along with stitches upon stitches
The croplands were unable atlast
To keep their rumps covered
After loosening a bit
The rumps were laid bare. Even the bogland
Below the reeds and couch grass got uncovered
Feathers sprouted and one day we left our dear fields
To mount onto the highway
But the cheerful forest
The barbets of the forest…
Losing sight of the shores
They fell into the boundless sea
The wings snapped and they dissolved therein
The pylons have bound our kite-flying sky
To a stock-still
Days and nights have even now remained the same
Yet the mornings and evenings leave not a chink
For a Lesser Whistling Duck
It’s fine, we’ve returned again
In quest of our patrimony,
But have we craved for their presence too even once!
Translated by Krishna Dulal Barua
Anirban Dutta is a poet and writer based Narayanpur, Lakhimpur, Assam. He has published one collection of ecopoems.
Krishna Dulal Barua is a prominent translator and writer based in Nagaon, Assam. He received the Katha Award for translation in 2005.