Hem Prabhas
He lifts his forehead and flings it hill-wards
Dismembers his fingers and sends them plain-wards,
Clad in life that indistinguishably looks like soil or garment
He lifts a load of perspiration onto his forehead;
On his face that looks well-fed even in bone-gnawing starvation
I sometimes see the sun racing
And sometimes the moon and the stars
Blooming like the red rhododendron!
My father is a farmer!
In musical waves rippling on each terrace
I know not how many of my father’s foot-soles ring,
Making a splash! Splash!
Nor do I know, upon his body beset by rain
Making it turn tent-like, or ghoom-like
How many times the sky has bumped
Together with clouds!
How many times did salt-like hailstones
Fall upon his hood
And how often did a day
Agile like a bird
Put up in his eyes?
He has no knowledge of math!
How many panniers full
He raised mangoes and litchis as dear as desires
And sent to the market beyond the hills
Swallowing his saliva!
These marketplaces
That drink high-cost juice, and make lofty imaginations
Have never even reckoned
The trail of my father’s self-confidence
No matter how many times I clean
The rice seeds, blue like the evening hills,
They remain bluestill;
I am sure: the hue of my father’s labor
Has got into them
Every morn, with his fingers
He points at the backyard garden
Laden with fruits in spikes of dewdrops
And says: This is what life should be like!
With blood that almost spills away in vain
While using a sickle,
He rinses the invisible sores of his heart
And yet, all over his hood, he raises
The smiles of home, front-yards and the farm!
Every time he picks and packs away
Oranges for towns
A thread from my father’s shirt
And a drag of blood from his thorn-pricked wounds
Too reach the town without a cost.
Is life that cheap?
Why doesn’t anyone speak —
If this town, dotted by houses
Claiming to be taller than Everest
Drinks water or beads of sweats?
Milk or forsaken tears?
Buys rice or the farmers’ dreams?
From this point of time
I am willing to open up all my heart
To my father and yell —
“Father, you are the God of Labor
That remains invisible to others!”
[Trans: Mahesh Paudyal]
(Hem Prabhas is an award-winning Nepali poet. Gold medalist of National Poetry Festival 2019, he is the author of three collections of poems: Pahad Bokera Pahadtirai, Sahar Paseko Manchhe and Geetai Geetko Gaun. He is also a film maker and director.)