बिनोद  बिक्रम के.सी.

     Serpentine Colony- Binod Bikram k.c

                               Translation- Himal khadka 

The first lessons you taught me were

to never crawl in life

to flow, sometimes egoistic

like a lover engrossed in own Loveland

to flow, sometimes roaring

like a rebel desperate to change the world

thank you! O river!

you saved me from dying

the inviting death by stagnancy

on the fourteenth day of my mother’s death

sitting on a rock at the bank, I wept

looking at your flowing face

Mother used to say, never pollute a river

that the soul of the river will cry

men of ill intentions have built

a serpentine colony

how the traitors would know!

the fish, the Peebles, and the sands are

someone’s offsprings

like a mother

who lost her sons and daughters one by one

sometimes in famine, sometimes in war

you are wandering off-track

carrying in your chest stories of grief  infinite

and the tune of the salt in your throat

When I am reading a newspaper  in a dream

suddenly Aurahi river breaks in the paper

Om Prakash a.k.a. Dilip Kumar,

the river lover’s dead body at the sandbank

crushed completely under

the tire of a tripper truck

fully smeared in blood

Translation- Himal khadka

it is dull news in a country that is

tempted to mass-murder the lovers

but sometimes

a single matchstick can cremate

your dream-world

and after that

you will start loving

trees, rivers, clouds, birds, children, Dilip

sacredly as never before,

this is the belief of a poet

please do not wrong it

at this hour

there are things that I must prove

I am not the man

that accommodates the river

just on the play- cards, banners or

on Facebook on Twitter

my nerves are

the river’s nativity

I am not afraid of

the gun on the shoulders of

the returners from the hunt of the river

to snatch back the reigns of the river

from the hands of the dread

and hand it back to the river itself,

will flow from my heart

a river of fire any day

I’m sure of it.