VISION
MAHIM BARA
Professor of Assamese in
Nowgong College
(Translated from
Assamese by DR. P. MACHWE)
All the evening in rainy
season
my eyes sit in the
verandah
evening sits in a
grass-stack
in the corner of my
verandah
what has suddenly
happened:
eyes shone? Green
lightning
glitter fixed
in the stack of grass.
Helpless with the hunger
of ‘Durvasa’ in two eyes
my eyes fixed on the
corner of those eyes:
in wonder
in the first-night love
In the markets crossing
many lights of beauty,
I wandered, I am tired
of higgling
I am a useless customer
at every shop.
Today in the corner of my
verandah
away from the eyes of
all
that beauty is caught.
Proud, neglected, shy,
very ordinary, like the
first-love’s
surrounding wrap-folds
of a sari;
Beauty was never playing
hide-and-seek as her.
From the depth of the
earth
two eyes have never
burnt so
either in Kaziranga or
Dabka.
In the corner of my
verandah all sweetness of the earth
has gathered in two
crooked lines
slippery soft body of a
frog.
A mere frog, and nothing
more
one moment of his life
is here.
Then are we not both
brothers? Let there start
an exchange of dreams
between us.