Blood Soaked 

You have forgotten your history 
Snapping your roots
You have become a chameleon 
History is stained with blood. 

Our roots are the same
Our blood was red
Drinking blue poison
You turned into a god of different hue. 

How could you build a rampart
Around your mind 
As cold as ice
As hard as fire 
Dividing us
A great disaster. 

The flag of peace flutters 
A storm is raging in the heart. 

Wiping out history 
You are now history yourself
Bloody time
Is so thirsty.

Arleng 

We have filtered through 
The pages of history 
Orally passed on from man to man.

Who are we?
The stones say we are the naked tribes of the hills.
History recorded us as the Mikirs.
We have carried in our hearts
The fire that burnt our house long ago.

Our friendship with fire is very old
The age old trees of the hills
Cry out to us
We are orthodox. 

Our lives wander up hills and down dales 
We have an ancient binding with Sriram.
Kalaguru also wrote about our culture. 

We are the offsprings of the blue hills 
We have never been savage.

Our hills are a separate self 
We are complete 
With separate culture, language and attire.

Folklores flowing through generations 
And the myths tell our story
Our identity is that we are men 
We are Arlengs.

Translated by Ananda Bormudoi

Click here to read the original Assamese poems.

Monika Teronpi is a young poet based in Diphu, Karbi Anglong, Assam.