Dream Poem by Prayag Saikia

A poem loses its form
If it veers from the fables
Lord Krishna always remains

In the prayers of my iconoclast ma
A Borgeet1 becomes the morning prayer
Tejare Kamalapati2
The sleep is broken
Verse is added to the fable
Matsya3
Kurma4
Narasimha5
Our Krishna in his ten manifestations

The nectar of Ghosa6 flows
I am in the bridge of poetry
In the Gosainghar7
With my mother
One day
She handed me a pen
Narrating a story
Your father dreamt
In the Gosainghar7
The feeling of touch of a book
On his arm
As he felt
He found
Not a book
But you
In your baby form
The dream is nice
So good
But if you don't wield the pen
Would the dream
Turn into a reality

1-Assamese Devotional song; 2 - A borgeet
3-Fish,4-Turtle,5-A human-lion combination
6- Opening line of prayers; 7 - Prayer room



(Translated from original Assamese by Bibekananda Choudhury)