Issue: Vol. V, No. 2, August-October, 2026
Without Saying a Word
Without saying a word
Many things became clear
A hailstorm passed by
And I stood all alone
In pitch dark
It’s strange
He was the only reliable man
In the journey of my life
With the words reliable and unreliable alike
A wall rose unaware
And also crumbled from moment to moment
And I washed clean every day
The stains of sorrows and sufferings
Along the blood stained path of life
You may be miles away
But at the time of suffering
If you put your ripe paddy field like hand on my head
I can fall in love with life again and again
Before uttering these nectar like words
A meteor was blazing through the sky
It’s strange
Even then the journey from a dreamland to reality
Was uninterrupted
Imon Kalyan, a raag as soft as moonlight
Was humming within my heart
Leaning head on the shoulder of the one most ancient.
At What amount of Suffering
The boats of the fishermen are lost
The men clasping the history of dreams
The sea is turbulent with the tide
The pride of the rocks on the coast
Locked in the golden beach
Has been swept along
When the storm subsides
The injuries are swept clean
By a velvet cloth
The silent coast is filled with strange noise
They ask life again and again
How dreams survive in silence
After so much of suffering
To answer the question
Life silently examined all faces
How can each of them be told
That the sea also asked life
What amount of pain can transform
Life into unmoving rocks
You can tell me
Can’t you?
Translated by Ananda Bormudoi
Sarifa Khatoon Chowdhury is an Assamese poet and novelist based in Doomdooma, Assam. She has two collections of poems to her credit. She is a Consulting Editor of PWF.