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| 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.
