Pendulum Of Candle Poem by Pradip Saikia

In what an uncertainty dances the candle pendulum

A flock of sparrows
That has lost its nestlings
Curses the storm throughout the night
A wail approaches creeping along a tiny bamboo bridge

Inside the belly of a woman
Wrapped in a bamboo mat
The future of a baby
That is yet to see the light

The people with scalding faces play the scorched lute
The burn wounds listen to tuneless raga
Cry of the fly

With some uncertainty
The time hits at the cymbals at the police lines

The emperor of night peeps
With an unsteady bottle
Sound of frogs
Jumping into the old well
The moon of fourteenth
That drowned in slippery water

# Translated from Assamese to English by: Bibekananda Chowdhury