~Raja Puniani~
Translated by : Bhupendra Subba
From my head to sole under
Stirs incessantly
A worm,
The weird worm
Like a comrade at one time
And a foe the very next moment
This worm is within me,
But strangely I keep on wearing an act
As if there isn’t anything inside.
I am
What I am, I say-
But I am also many more
And many different others besides being what I am
– Who will seek?
Who will write? –
It makes me anxious
And then I smoke a cigarette
Or drink tea
Or remain wearily uninterested,
It is when the consumerist clatters of commercials
Translate my anxiety into the suffocating constraint.
Archaeologist Dr. Thapa stretched back
The history of Kalimpong up to above four thousand years,
Reaching up to that starting point of Time
The worm within me
Sings a song of cultivation
Recites a poem of nature
Displays tricks of magic
And runs up to where I am
And standing upright against the ground of Time in which I live
Suggests me to forget history again
A quake rocks the whole indeed
Whenever this worm states so vehemently-
Your house is a house of cards!
The wall of civilization which strives to remain new forever
Which we built with so much pride
Turns old as Time passes by with every moment-
– Walking in line with the wall like a procession
Where are the primitive worms heading to?
– Like the universe expanding like a balloon
This walking has no definite end
And so these worms have
No definite name, identity or nature
Seeing all tattered body of culture
Scab-infected
The worm inside me stirs even more.
Says, he feels to puke hard.
Says, he’s getting too giddy.
At this hour
I am scared of my own shadow
More than anyone else
– While in the dark phase of Time
It is this shadow
That deserts first of all
We, toiling to metamorphose
Into undefined something from worms, were worms
Even after walking through passages and tracks
Of so many centuries
We are still worms
The weird worm within me
Never tells
His history openly,
Has never told at all
But I look at it and write down its history,
Keep writing in a language it never understands
– Even this poem is a text of that history-writing
Reading or listening to which
Or without reading or without listening to which
You are imbibing the history of worms.
