Dipika Khatiwada
Music
How powerful even your melody is!
It draws close to it and drifts to unknown locations
I can never tell for sure
How lively you have kept each of our memories
Keeping them fresh all the time!
In each version of you
I find myself force-stopped at a point
Alongside the incessant time
I have failed to stop.
Martyr
Thrown helter-skelter on the desert are lumps of flesh;
The body is no longer intact!
You offered the body to the nation
Where are the wishes left in hand anymore?
As for wishes, you sent forth a river of them
Look at the saplings that have sprouted
In the flow of cravings you let out!
Not everyone can send for
Such immortal cravings in life!
Kids and the Shelter
Yes to begetting kids
But no to having a shelter!
Raise them by pasting close to the self
Get satiated, seeing them eat
Enjoy in their wishes
And make them the basis for living…
Today, when they are me, and I them—
They do not, at all, uphold my wishes.
Yes to begetting kids
But no to having a shelter!
[Dipika Khatiwada (b. 2000) is a Nepali poet from Morang, based now in Kathmandu. Her poems have been collected in Ujyaloka Maliharu, a collection of poems by eleven young Nepali poets.]