By HIKMAT THAPA
I am drinking
Indigenous Ethiopian coffee
Of Arabica breed
The chocolate-dark image made by vapor
Rises over the cup
And gives an ethereal kiss
Being covered under a rainbow
I feel you too are somewhere here
Playing hide and seek with me.
As if the consistent melody of the Atlantic Ocean
Comes and caresses my ears
As if your thick lips
Kiss me somewhere
In the colorful dreams
Created by the evening waves of the sea
Your adorable image flies
Along with the vapor of the African coffee.
A little different
Neither green
Nor red
Not yellow either
Like her dark color
Like Eve who for the first time
Was left to roam in this earth.
Or like Lucy
That bloomed in the rift valley somewhere here
Or like Amina, Bukola or Nyoka
That walk through the bank of Nile River
You come closer
Like the fragrance of the African coffee.
Black—like songs of freedom
Black—like romantic poems
Time—then and now
The earth weeps— panicked by discrimination
It is webbed through the filaments of colors
That needs to be wiped away.
Black—like songs of freedom
Please standthere without colors
Shifting in black and white images
The sizzling vapor of
African coffee, Arabica
And the Americano in the menu
Like my beloved
Whose chocolate-dark complexion
Turns colorless!
[Translated from Nepali by Keshab Sigdel]