Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 3, Number 1. May 2020. ISSN: 2581-7094
Translating
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Basudhara Roy
Here,
where each language is a mirror
relentlessly
dissolving and reassembling
utterance,
you ask me to steadily row
to
reach a place where we will stand
quenched,
feet planted on firm earth,
over
our heads a benevolent sky,
all
knots in the heart undone. In this
mosaic
rain of unmouthed sounds and
faltering
scripts every thought I chase
is
a flaming wick that promises
to
melt to sober oil for me this
wax
landmass of your thoughts.
Taut
birds’ wings slice the languor
of
the early winter air overhead.
In
the water of my still perception,
your
metaphors send ripples. Your
light
changes much I have known so far;
maps,
hues, feathers find more shapes.
The
fire of your signification breathes
steadily
like a stream. I draw catenaries
from
its heart to mine, shovel for sense,
unearth
debris; strike, sometimes, gold.
On
my page your syllables change form.
Your
allusions shatter against my yearning
into
a thousand nameless bits, each
a
mouth that tells me what you are;
what,
perhaps, you may never be.
How
does one translate meaning,
supposition,
intent? Find pathways
through
unencountered wildernesses?
Seek
entry into barred homes? Knock
upon
untold names? Can leaps of faith
be
made across topographies, across ages?
Equivalences
sought between inland
and
peninsula? I fail to be mere florist,
fail
to replace your bunch of variegated
meaning
utterance by utterance, flower by
flower.
Your words must cook in my familiar
oils;
soften, blend under a patient flame.
Your
coastal comb strokes my desert hair;
your
rain-bred passions teach my arid ones
to
moisten, to flow. My baked terracotta
assonances
dream in your ceramic calm. Here,
where
I stand, my language outruns yours,
a
prancing wave restless in its delight to touch
meaning’s
shore. You follow to see what I
bring.
All I have deposited therein, you promptly
plough
back. I spend moonless nights rowing
for
a bank till one dawn I stumble upon a clearing
where
we can both rest a while, hand in hand,
before
meanings, like continents, inch apart.