पैदल पुल (दंतेवाडा-बस्तर की डंकिनी शंखिनी नदी के तट से लौटकर) बाँस का यह पुल धीरे धीरे हवा में हिलता हुआ बंधे हुए बाँसों के बीच से नदी का बहता हुआ जल दिखता है लाल है इस नदी का जल लौह खदान को जो पार कर के आती है बहते हुए जल को बहते हुए [...]

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VISHNUPRIYA Eye-light gone at dawn! Flowers gazing into lakes, striving to pick these, we forget how to swim. Newborn faeries of the seas sweet-talk us into their land where a river issuing from every fiber is there for us to swim. But we forget to. Oh, eye-light gone at dawn! Rays of the sun slide [...]

THE EARTH You’d like to turn over but those mud houses resting at your body’s edge won’t let you Perhaps you’d like with your hands, to brush away the snow at the poles. but you can’t because who knows how many luminous birds and snakes encircle your arms On your navel the golden gaze of [...]

OUTPOURING: A TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION It is not easy to read a collection of poetry, any collection for that matter, at one stretch. And if you were me, watching your man walk away, Buddhalike, there is no greater pain than reading about love. I have been living on a razor’s edge, wagering my sanity ever since [...]

NEAR Near the Stone was the Tree Near the Tree was the Bush Near the Bush was the Grass Near the Grass was the Earth Near the Earth was the High Cliff Near the Cliff was the Fort’s Tower Near the Tower was the Sky Near the Sky was the Void Near the Void was [...]

I am tired the morning star whispers I am tired of shining in the solitude of this washed out sky dust swirls in the dry bed of the Ganga a camel ambles towards the city with its load of shining deep green melons its bells ringing in the cool breeze of dawn it is the [...]

झूलता स्वप्न आकाश से उतरा एक झूला कमरे की छत पर उसमें एक हरा तोता एक कव्वा पुष्प पारिजात के भीतर से मैंने कहा ‘ये मेरे झूला झूलने की उम्र नहीं’ बाहर से किसी ने कहा ‘मगर प्यास का क्या करें’ मैं लोटा भर शीतल जल छत पर लाया उठने लगा तब तक झूला ऊपर [...]

Even Now If you’re on a mountain Put your foot on the wind’s back and come If you’re on a riverbank far away Become a piece of straw and ride the current If you’re in an unknown world Hold tight to the thread of your Weeping and wakefulness and come Whoever you are Wherever you [...]

LAST LIGHT And again I enter the hour at which nothing suffices but the memory of sunset in the southern heartland the light sweeping its long wing across a terrain of brown puddles –         the river, scattered and whole the slow ascent of the moon’s painted eye from the corner where the earth kisses its [...]