Translation
He translates her,
not in the language he speaks
or in the script she writes,
but in their unfulfilled
mad rush into one another’s eyes
when they make love.
He translates her earlobe
into a winged mountain
that unburdens her wounded heart.
He translates her nose into the bugle
to summon the dying dreams
from her lap.
He translates her nipples
into the script of needles
which stitches her broken nights
with the sunbeams of a jovial day.
He translates her hair
into the language of dancing,
mustard flowers of her afternoon,
when the sun leaves with its decaying youth
leaving a thousand stars blooming in
her soil.
He translates
her lips into honey pots
where the bees mortgage 9
their lives and his tongue hums
the ocean in her triangle.
Their ship sails forth for the discovery
of the deserted lighthouse
in her canyon.
He is Both
I call him my Majnu.
I suck his breasts,
they taste like my own milk
that I feed my sons every day,
my sons of many wombs.
I call him Laila sometimes.
He rubs my navel and places
a hot water bottle on my abdomen.
On days of cramp,
he massages my thighs.
I call him both Majnu and Laila.
On days when he sits beside me, he
listens to my stories and cries with me.
When I explode in pleasure,
he licks my sweat and
sings a lullaby till I
fall into a deep sleep.
He smells like the father that I
never had.
He is Laila
or Majnu
or both.
He is my lover.
Joy, Dance, Life
Her long absence
is the Snow of Kars
burdened with childhood memories
and the lifelong pursuit of
adulthood.
For a glimpse of her
a mad heart pummels
the impenetrable snow
of absent time
with the hammer of love.
She is not a diva
or a goddess incarcerated
in rituals, shackled with divinity.
She is fresh air
mad river
a lonely boatman’s song
a common woman sitting on a staircase
draped in the aura of rangoli.
She is
joy, dance, life.
Hugs
I close my eyes
and go to sleep.
In dream
I land in Kochi airport
or maybe in Bagdogra
or in a deep dense forest
or on a rusty iron bed
or on the words, I type, retype or
sometimes delete.
You wait for me there
keeping a sky on your bosom,
hug me to liberate me
from the cold, piercing
nails of the hugs that
I always had from him.
We then become a river
untamed, unregulated
dancing without feet on grounds,
rushing madly towards our bodies.
I wake up from sleep
and then walk the whole day
towards the same dream
of my nights.
Moumita Alam is a poet from West Bengal. Her second poetry collection, Poems At Daybreak has been published by Red River Publications. The Telugu translations of her poems have been published in a collection titled, Poems That Should Not Be Written.
