When you let me love you: Poetry

1) When you let me love you

Easterine Kire

When you let me love you

I feel powerful

life-giving

like the sun and the air

like the rain that falls

over a new seed

When you let me love you

I stand back and proudly watch

you sprout and stretch

fresh limb branches into the sky.

2) Getting Real

Easterine Kire

The people that I love

keep falling off their pedestals

and can't seem to

get back up again

but that's alright

that's quite alright now

This way

every fall

makes me love them as they are

warts and all

no magic to them

pumpkin people

at the stroke of midnight

arthritic and 50

and so, so vincible.

3) When will you come back Home?

Manas Ranjan Mahapatra

Silence hurts, let us start talking

Dear Kapil, when will you come back home?

The neighbours may be waiting for your return

And, you have been roaming in the market since long

Tell us, what is today's rate of onions?

Your path of return is full of darkness

Will you tell us, what you saw in the market?

Plunder at one place and Baba's blessed powders

at the other

and at places there is chant for the God

Well done, you saw everything and did not utter

a single word

those who raised their voice yesterday

Have been banished today from the State

and thieves move in the disguise of the police.

I wanted to go back to the village

But don't you know,

your village have been eaten away by the

smart city

see around, you will find slums, labourers, masters

and how shoes fit into the paws of leaders

What you saw in the lit fest that you went Kapil!

Votes decide fate of creations

and currencies demark the boundaries of poetry

Waste land of Almighty's dear chairs

Silence hurts

and it pains to walk in an unknown route

how useless are words in the merchant's world

Blind King in the Blind Kingdom

and donkeys enjoy their time

Why are you then moving

throughout the hot afternoon, Kapil,

in so much sun and rain?

It's abnormally late now, dear

Let's go back home.

Translated from Odia by the Poet

4) In the Annals of Time

Parthajit Borah

I move after the second

I hop after the minutes,

I swing after the hours

when the verse forms

in the pages of my bosom.

Years are the uninvited alarm of life.

which reminds my past

in a foggy spring night.

You borrowed my evening as I

lost the spirit of life.

Tiring mind for chasing the clouds of emotion I become the washer

of your grief clothes.

washing with the detergent of warm tears.

I gradually lose your green smile

in the annals of time.

Fallen ring of your finger sparks me.

Now, I am dying by your bright eyes

in the annals of time.