As children,
we marveled at the flights of Demossile Cranes
flying hither
from across the Koshi
...
Creeping for eternity
On a banana leaf
I was but
A glum caterpillar.
...
'No man ever steps in the same river twice' - Heraclitus
'To gaze at the river made of time and water
And recall that time itself is another river' - Jorge Luis Borges
...
Whole night
I gave you the moon and the stars.
When the morning came
...
Until the sky remains blue
Think, I am still not dead.
Like you, I had seen the sky in blue colour.
Until my thought about the sky has not changed.
...
Okay! Comrade! Okay!
I do respect and want to say Zindabad
but tell me first where is Inquilab?
...
Dutendra Chamling is a Nepali poet.)
When A Lie Becomes Imminent
As children,
we marveled at the flights of Demossile Cranes
flying hither
from across the Koshi
crooning melodies of their heart.
filed in a line like a wreathe
Before long,
they would dart away
Mother would then, tell us—
towards the mountains in Tyamké
across the hills of Urleni.
in small caverns along the walls
'Kids! It's time, we should be sowing cucumber.'
See would then look for seeds
poles at our backyards would be lush
and in pouches, bound into knots
and stored safely in clay goglets.
In a few weeks,
with juvenile cucumbers
hanging like a Madal.
My son, yesterday, beseeched me
to bring home a cucumber;
I, however returned home empty
from Ratnapark, the cherished field of the jobless.
but I thought hard and consoled myself, 'No crane ever flies
My wife reprimanded me
over the skies in Kathmandu.'
sowed when no cranes were flying
And that gave an exit—
'Honey; we shouldn't be eating cucumbers
in the sky.'
* © Published.
[Translated by Mahesh Paudyal]
When we don't feel well, we go to hospital. Demonstration is a good hospital in democracy.