One Who Recalls Previous Birth Poem by Ananta Rajkhowa

The lone field finds
One solitary tree!
Its leaves are but white feathers
Of cranes
And underneath painstaking attempt of
The bowing brunch to touch the sky leads A long road.

None prefers to use that road
None comes ever through it
Only a lonely bird every afternoon
Rest on some brunch of the tree
For a while.
Defiling its piled up sorrows there
It takes its plight of flight
Craving the saffron tint of setting sun.

That tree was but a hero of a ancient tale.
Its cordium is succumbed to the weight
Of shade of pride and feeble limelight.
Oh; that very heart where dwelt
A tune of flute with utter secrecy.

One night of Moonless sky
I was paving my way in dreamy trance
With that antique gesture
I engaged myself
To shear out historiography of that tree
To gather an old story
Caressing my
Habitual sadnesses in my lap.

Toucing both the sides of the road
There was a barren plot og land abandoned
For a century at a stretch.
The plot of land, frontier of which
Got missed in horizon
Provided abode to weeds' and shrubs' disdain.
A century ago the last rite of my
Grand father's penultimate bone was performed in this very land.
Got knibbled by moth of Time tempest
The remains of my grandpa's bone.
The roots of that ancient tree
Reached that bony remains
And managed to sit there somehow
Embracing the blemished blood-washed Sun.

With those soles of my centurion feet trodden with overture of bed-bug
I advanced as a shadow within that gloom
Shearing the mist of that weary road.
At the last verge of that mournsome night
At the early dawn of birth of that dead Sun
I presented myself at the shade of that
Tree of dream.

The tree was busy at meditation with apt simile to a calm serene grand patron
Putting its eyes on sky of indifference
In the search of a long lostinitiation point
Of a vibrant jovial star.
And verily that point of initiation
Kept hidden the glorious
Resurgence of that old abandoned tale.

With steady graduation
I let the roots of that very tree be advanced
Unto my each and every cell.
And I got transformed into a new chapter
Of that ancient lore.
(Translated from Assamese by Dr Bipul Boruah)