Kushal Neupane

You came.

You came closer to me.

And it had to bloody rain so much!

I could not even find your aroma

With all the muddy odor wind had spread about.

In the odor of ash rising at every rainfall

I remembered you.

It felt good.

This time rain turned the paddy field into a barren shore.

Shifting even closer

You said,” Could I get a beedi¹?”

This bloody tin roof makes such a ruckus!

How your voice was, I wonder:

Thick as a parrot’s?

Or mellifluous like a bulbul’s?

One day a flock of parrots came

I got lost in your remembrances

The maize in the fields was all gone.

One day a flock of bulbuls came

I remembered you again

It felt good.

Vegetable crops staked at the backyard were gone.

Now it seems

Had I known what your voice was exactly like

At least one thing would have been saved.

In your memory

I am going to starve for a year.

Like you had come

Stealthily came a snake, one day,

Sneaked into the cattle-shed

And killed the milking buffalo.

Like you had come

Came a mongoose one day.

I felt hopeful.

I’d thought it would kill the snake.

It left killing a grown-up chicken.

Never again has it rained as hard as upon your arrival.

The beedi you happened to touch as you pulled one out

Is still on the shirt’s pocket, un-smoked!

I know not

Why I await another such torrential rain?

For it to take this remaining life too?

Now I am wishing that you wouldn’t come

But, unless you didn’t

There shall also be no end to waiting for your not coming.

1. A beedi (also spelled bidi or biri) is a thin cigarette or mini-cigar filled with tobacco flake and commonly wrapped in a Tendu (Diospyros melanoxylon) or Piliostigma racemosum leaf tied with a string or adhesive at one end. It originates from the Indian subcontinent.

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(Translated from the Nepali original by Roshan Koirala)