~Bhupi Sherchan~
Translated By : Yuyutsu R.D. Sharma
O unfortunate children
children of partridges, quails and sacrificial buffaloes,
be it the German attack
Burma’s turbulent borders,
rubber forests of Malaya,
Nefa of Ladakh’s battlefields of fire, O unlucky
illustrious scapegoats
who lost their lives
without a cause in lands foreign,
like a partridge,
a quail or a bull
Provoked by others
to spurt into a murderous motion
cheered by claps
triggered not from within,
drowsed by wines
gifted to quell the qualms of conscience,
leaped into battlefields
shrieking Ayo Gorkhali
howling the advent of
senseless bulls on the altars of injustice,
O unfortunate widows celebrating
your sons, birthdays with pension of these very soldiers,
O old parents invoking
the charms of eighty-four gods from the magic,
of their blood soaked earnings,
O gallants glowing from
the warmth of your late friends jersey,
wooing Solteni in Rodi,
O brides on the fresh nuptial wagons
flushed form the glow of nose rings,
and bangles gifted by former heroes
greatly shimmers on your chests
these Paramavir Chakras and Victoria Crosses.
But doesn’t ever from
these medals come a corpse’s festering stench,
stench of your own butchered dream?
Courtesy: Bagar No.24-25, Asian Poetry
