Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 5, Number 2. November 2022. ISSN: 2581-7094
Animikh
Patra (poet) with translations by Souradeep Roy and Animikh Patra
The
sound of a pigeon's flight (“Payra Orar
Shobde”) by Animikh Patra
--- Translated by Souradeep Roy
When
I hear a pigeon’s flight a window thrusts open in my mind. As if the mind is a
big house with a square inside. A few birds enter. I pull the horizon back into
my mind as this happens. A lovely, bright sunset falls all over me; in the old
room from my school, feathers fly, waltz into the room, and fall on the ground.
In that moment, I am one with the horizon and go out with my birds.
I
look like a magnificent magician
I
vanish my identity in front of several eyes with a trick
Wild Beast (Baatil Shwapad)
---
Translated by Animikh Patra
I am an abandoned beast
I have eaten up half the fruit of
life
Roamed in many forms through the
jungles of humans
Stripes of my body wither away each
time I mate
The drudgery of jobs has bitten me
here and there like an insect
Old, gummy and blunt a beast I am.
I search for my mane in older
photographs
My wild side dies out, I mix into a
crowd of mundane people
Not dusk, but in between day and
night
a crater is still seen, where you
may lose your mind
I am an abandoned beast
I decide to drop the other half of
fruit into that crater
Inside
Dreams (“Shopner Bhetore”) by Animikh Patra
--- Translated by Souradeep Roy and the poet
Having
gone too far inside a dream
I
am now standing in front of the dream’s house
I
see it is not like a multicoloured compact prism of poems
Rather,
it’s a mansion where life is decorated in floor after floor
Memory
like a cat roams inside and meows smell, touch
as
if I have bloomed there like an epic book
How
will I read such a book?
And
how will I remain alive on this mortal world from now on?
If
we enter a dream’s house
how
can we exit the dream?
I
was thinking of all of this,
and,
on noticing that I was slowly moving towards a story,
returned
to poetry
Hilly
(Pahari)
--- Translated by Animikh Patra
I
have come to mountain in winter
And
resolved the warning of an easy riddle
I
see the bloom of pomegranate-cloud
Arrogance
of language, its tested wings
On
every hair-pin turn
Query’s
irregular arm
falls
from the edge