Translation: Assamese Poetry of Guna Moran

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

Guna Moran

LIKE WATER

Shapeless
Wordless

Flows down
Turns into a river

What would flow like a river
Who is benevolent like water

I don’t have means to buy golden utensil
To store water to quench my thirst

I cut out a bamboo cylinder to keep water and hung it down from the wall
Help myself with a swig fetching it as I get thirsty

Had golden utensil been favourite of water
What had been the plight of a person like me

As I measured shapeless water with a suspicious eye
I could not understand its value

Now only I understand
Why it does not have the shape
Neither the words.
***


RAVANA

One soul
Three incarnations

All three times
Iconoclast
All the three times
Stayed in the hands God

How benevolent Ravana had been
More devoted to God
Than a god believer

Adversity is the best stairway to reach God
Was rightly understood by wise Ravana

Memory is the best offering
It is only possible
To memories every moment
Through adversity
So
Ravana did not turn a believer
***


THE THREE MONKEYS AND ME

One monkey said closing the eyes –
Don’t look at bad things
Another monkey said tying its face –
Don’t say anything bad
The third one said covering the ears –
Don’t listen to bad things

I didn’t listen to the monkeys
In spite of being a human

Did many things
Travelled across places and States
Tasted some so called sins
In the name of experience

At the end the mind turned melancholic
An unknown feeling of guilt chases me around
Now

What did I do
What did I do
I didn’t perform prayers
The tiger of illusion chases

At last I surmised
I was born at a wrong place 
I was born at the wrong time
I was born wrong.
***

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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