Amrita Smriti

Translated from Nepali by Hem Bishwakarma

 

Albeit you are close enough

why are you so far off?

even though you are lofty enough

why do you seem down to foothill?

what rock of sorrow

shattered you into pieces?

what hammer-strike

ruined the castle of your valour?

who did the drunken artist paint?

thus unsuitable hue on your face

that had to bloom youth!

 

Oh, Senchury Dai!

you emptied the uncounted centuries

in the love of this soil

you know,

before the heat treatment

to toughen the edge of a sword

an iron beats another iron!

 

why are you stumbling?

shoved yourself to a side or a nook

sometimes toward uphill or downhill

at times to plains or cliffs?

which hornet stung on your thousands of arms?

are your thousands of lungs exhausted

blowing on a nation’s wound from a bellows?

 

you know,

after your feet grew a meadow

the pats become a journey

 

Oh, Senchury Dai!

a ladder is needed

him who has to climb on a roof

a balloon skies its aim to the air

a road is to be self-constructed!

 

What’s that doesn’t pain or smash?

flowers will have to fall off

yet releases fragrance

a night will have to fall

yet the sun does shine

these mountains

never migrate

rather they have pain

pared off with landslip

Terrains wait for a drop of rain

unafraid of being arid

 

Getting out of your soundproof heart

come on, Senchury Dai,

holding our plough handles

let’s plow the terrace of our lands!

…

 

Poet Amrita Smriti is the First Runner Up in National Poetry Competition-2078 (Rastriya Kavita Mahotsav) organized by Nepal Academy (Rastriya Prajyna Pratisthan).