Udoi Kumar Baruah
We're tea-plants, Though we grow sideways for the grafting Of our feathered hopes The ancestral fetters of bondage Round our ankles The document of the dungeon in the pale eyes Green blood streams forth through the veins We're the centre of a world of artifice Would you listen to the woeful ballad of those bearing only deceit After their loyalty to our service from dawn to dusk Whose blood - sweat - toil are used as fuel by a few narcissists To run the train of their dreams Though our green sensation is kept nailed, The two-leafed sprout of love totally shattered, We know everything, understand everything With whose sweat of the brow does the chrysanthemum bloom In whose courtyard On the Karam Puja night Emerging out of the hollow of yellowish silence I ask the God of stone: Where's the path of our freedom In the countless lines of oblation in our skin and flesh Is there the lost tip-off of sky-gazing dreams.
Translated by Krishna Dulal Barua
Udoi Kumar Baruah is a senior Assamese poet based in Guwahati. He has three collections of poems to his credit.
Krishna Dulal Barua is a prominent translator and writer based in Nagaon, Assam. He received the Katha Award for translation in 2005.