Translation: Assamese Poetry of Guna Moran

Original: Assamese: Guna Moran - English Translation: Bibekananda Choudhury

Guna Moran

FLOWING ALONG LIKE THE RIVER

I
Keep treading on
The chosen path
Bearing along
At every step

Sigh of anguish
Comes out
Piercing through the heart

I ask myself
My own question
Make myself listen to
My own replies

Solitary life
Lived alone

Carrying a load of neck deep sorrow
Of flowing along
Like a river
The life flows too
To the sea of finish

Death is the container
Of all the complaint
So life points towards death
 
UNWELL
Original : Assamese : Guna Moran
Translation : Bibekananda Choudhury
Writing on
Creator is finally unhappy

On touching his lifeless hands
Like a dead snake
As I meet him
My hand too turns ice cold

In his pallid eyes like a dead fish
There appears to be a cursed fountain
Flowing down under the sand

The sun too has many sorrows
The lights end up landing on the hell
Like the grieving white paper stung by the pen
(paper bears the stains of the pen)

I cannot make the unhappy happy
I don’t have the capacity
To hand happiness
Borrowing from sorrow

Still at the very opportunity
I prepare a stage for the unhappy
And then I too turn unpopular

It is said that
There is no stage for the unhappy


THE BIRDS

Because they do not have a
permanent home
The birds are always free from the
worries of land and property

They make a nest at the time of hatching
The fledglings fly away as they grow wings
The nests too drop down as it rots

As they do not have a permanent
home to say their own
They cannot be blinded by the
longings for their kins

So they can fly away to reach the horizon
With their partners
At their own will

Therefore  it’s only them
Who can enjoy the pleasure of
Getting drenched in rain
With their partners


Blue

Abode of blue
The beautiful sky
Abode of blue
The salty sea

If blue is sorrow
How much blue did the sky imbue to
turn blue
How much blue does the sea hold to
turn blue

Rivers are happy to leave the burden
Of flowing to sea
The sea is blue holding the happy
rivers in its bosom

My neelkanth parents left for
Heavenly abode leaving me happy
The sky said to be blue as it the
abode of those heavenbound souls

The sky is blue
The sea is blue
And blue am I

I mean anyone
Who can turn neelkanth
imbibing  the blue

N B: Neelkanth : Shiva, the Hindu God, who is said to have got his neck (kanth) singed blue by the power of poison that came out while the sea was  churned with a mountain by the Devas holding at one end and the Asuras at the other.

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Bios

Author: Guna Moran is an Assamese poet & critic. His poems are being translated into Italian and France language and have been published in various national and international magazines, journals, websites, newspapers like The Tuck magazine, Spillword, The Merak magazine, Story Teller, The Poem Hunter, The Sentinal, The Hills Times, Best Poetry and so on.

Translator: Bibekananda Choudhury, an electrical engineer by profession, working with the State Government of Assam, has completed his Masters from BITS-Pilani. He has also earned a diploma in French language from Gauhati University. He has got published works (both original and translated) in Assamese, Bengali & English in popular periodicals and newspapers. His translated poems have been published in 'Indian Literature', the bi-monthly journal of sahitya akademy. 'Suryakatha', the Bengali adaptation done by him is being taught in the undergraduate Courses of Banglore University and Post graduate Courses of Gauhati University. A collection of 101 folk tales from the foothills of Patkai translated by him has been taken up by publication by Gauhati University. He is presently the editor-in-chief of Dimorian Review, a multidisciplinary web journal.

Setu, May 2019