Poetry: Prem Prakash Limbu

Prem Prakash Limbu

1.     WRINKLES ON MY GRANDMA

Oh! Grandma your wrinkles

Transcend the dead times

With folds of generations.

First folds from the virgin, verdant

Laborious hills of Dhojpur

Stalking down the treacherous, sinuous pony path

Through the square fields

Of golden paddy

Over the basking Balason

To Munglang

Where money grew

On the vastly spread of green crown

Of the migrated tea bushes

Under the flames of Siris

As believed.

Instead was whipped

And captivated to shiftless living.

There are folds of merry and melancholy

Within the nostalgic lines

Of unmanufactured dwellings

That had vines at their bamboo gates;

Trimmed fence of blooming hedges;

A rill escapading behind

With seasonal sprightly herrings;

Tall swaying coconut and betel-nut palms

In ambience of unity;

The smell still lingers

And enchants my mind

Though folded in wrinkles now.

Happenstance flee of the fourteen years old lass

Matured than age

In bloom of her lustrous youth

Like the radiant bud

That made our Grandfather love sick

And she too succumbed to his pious sin

Adding more folds of lives

On her cheek

But life never loitered there

Through oppressed tea bushes

Bearing the British lashes

Over her undestined fate

And corroding esteem

Unrealized Hope of her born breaths

Kept her watering the sowed seeds

With her untiring soul

To grow floating forests

Sinking into the future

With flushed new born leaves

I can read all in her folded skin.

2. CARBON SMOKE

I feel

I gambol after a tractor again

Through the dusty lane

Along the terrai tea-bushes

As dense fog of dust arose

When trotted by

We hustled and bustled

To sniff that carbon filled diesel

That burnt evil dark smoke

Which my naughty Grandfather

A Goodrick driver

Fed our eerie addiction.

3. FRIENDSHIP

Whatever the roots may be

Or the destination be

It is glory to be a flock

Though in contrast may our character be

Shapes, appearances, races different

Yet when one cries, the other cries

When one laughs, the other laughs

When one falls, the other falls

That’s how friends bond.

No matter what conspired storms may drift in

Clutched on one stem of trust and belief

Withstand them and make merry

Even when everything’s wrong

Graciously bloom together

Petals to petals bond

That’s how friends bond.

4. RIDE

I wish to take you for a ride all through the paradise, My lad

And you like me take others

No gust no speed can shake you

As my chest would be spread ahead you

Be beside me and learn to tame the restive stallion

That will ride all through the paradise, My lad

I see there comes a paradise guarded by a dragon.

5. CONFLUENCE

Teesta Rangeet confluence

Ever flowing, unending journey

Both from unknown terrain

Meets to be one

And powerfully flows

Under bridges innumerable

That connects souls apart

Towards its destination

A message for every lives.

Lives merge into Death

Happiness merges into sorrow

And tranquilly spreads into space

With invisible souls with wings

Holding nothingness

With tributaries of reminiscence

Flooding the banks of eyes

Confluence of rise and fall

A message for every lives.

Setu, June 2018