Abhi Subedi
Street
Sometimes I wriggle, tickled by crowds,
Sometimes I climb up to your doorsteps
To beg for alms for the martyrs,
And there you put it in a little
of the sky that you imagine,
Two or three handfuls of your difficulties,
Your hopes and your delusions and
Your desire to see the morning.
Without delay I return and pour out your dreams
In the palace, courts and ministries.
The writer of history measures the distance
From your door to there, and is ready.
And I, like a rainbow
Of colored lines
Drawn absentmindedly from top to bottom in a picture,
Lie down with your poem as my pillow.
The Man They All Forge
Obliged to squat beside the road
Where kings and leaders walk,
I
Have become grass within my own narrowness,
Time takes their vehicles and runs along;
I am there, having found no place to grow in,
Where the dreams of the strong are spread out,
I
Trace the face of this nation
With the bloodied colors
Of barracks, guardrooms, the Singha Darbar.
Dreams there are many
Though all have forgotten them;
Now I bear them
And I am beginning to rise,
I stand on the path down which time will return
There is one hope now;
I grasp hold of its hem
And walk, setting free the cursed history,
I have risen, moved by the sun.
When I am pressed under the dream of the strong
I can be forgotten again.
The Man They All Respected
Pressed down by the hands of the sun
I have burst like a pomegranate;
I am afflicted, struck by the blows
Of many loving eyes;
On the heights you have set down
I climb up the stairs of a sky of pain.
I speak,
You are not moved by it,
I smile,
The darkness does not fall from your face,
I weep,
The height you have given me does not collapse.
I am tormented by the emptiness
Between speech and crowd,
I can not pass through the door that has been opened for all,
I can not be washed along
By the flood of man upon man,
The sky that I tugged to this place and unfurled
Is suspended over my pain only,
Below the voice of the bell of happiness
I quickly cover my face.
Perhaps I have broken into many pieces.
In your eyes
I am like a picture that has lost its centre
But in my own eyes
I am caught in the pain of my own color.
Translated by Michael Hutt