If you look me in the eye and say the things left unsaid
Me: I said the things left unsaid looking into your eyes,
Please don't fear,
I won't break your heart like rivers break dykes,
The sight of falling dewdrops fills me with gladness,
As dreams of an aquamarine sky.
You: How I wish that in the dew-bedecked green forest
The swaying flowers had spoken!
I would have embraced the dyke-breaching-river then!
Me: If the swaying flowers speak,
The gardener will pluck them;
It is not easy to embrace a river in spate,
It will rend the heart into pieces!
You: I can even embrace a river in spate
If you look me in the eye and say the things left unsaid,
Because you know, the sight of falling dewdrops
Fills me with gladness as well.
Life
Rivers are the makers of civilisation
It is the river that has shaped my life story,
A sacred path leading to our separate destinies.
The trees look at their reflection on the river and play a merry game of shadows
Adam and Eve used to swim in gay abandon
Now I carry the djinn unleashed by Adam and Eve.
I have descended from the hill to the plain
Sounded the bugle of civilisational values
Erasing the markers of differences between the hills and plains
by bringing them closer
Transforming culture
In the quest to usher in a new way of living.
Made friends and foes alike, saw death up-close,
Heard the ominous call of the departing bird.
I fall down headlong from the sky,
Blood-splattered sword in the river of life,
While there lie dormant a sea of misery.
For whose misery does the river shed a tear?
For whose misery does the eye look beyond the Patkai range,
Seeking for my address?
The way in which the river courses,
Is the way that leads to my home.
Translated by Mridul Bordoloi
Bipul Regon is an Assamese poet and writer. He published three collections of poems. Sita Ravanar Atmakatha is his latest collection of poems. Besides writing in Assamese he also writes in Malayalam and Hindi language. He is presently working as a lecturer at the Department Hindi, Asom Sattriya Sangit Mahavidyalaya, Jorhat.
Dr. Mridul Bordoloi teaches in the Department of English, Dibrugarh University. As a literary critic, he writes in English and Assamese as well.