‘Tomorrow, you watch, god will sprout from me’: Nepali poet Avinash Shrestha in translation

Relative

The cliffs are beautiful
Even more beautiful than flowers

The thorns are sorrowful
Even more sorrowful than colours

The heart drifts high, high above
Even higher than the butterflies, the birds

Age flows
Molten gold flows

Illusion enfolds illusion, in turn hidden by another illusion
Like night enfolds darkness, and darkness hides by night

Metamorphosis

Embracing the river I fall asleep unafraid
& when I wake I become the boundless sea

All night I crawled awake in the lifespan of a caterpillar
In the afternoon dream I’ve transformed into a butterfly in bright air

I was arrogant, cruel but an imperishable thorn until yesterday
Someone heartless has dropped me – in the flower’s brief body

A feather I drift wherever – piggybacking on the wind
In my soul I nurse a primitive desire to be a bird

I’m only a seed today – I know
Tomorrow, you watch, God will sprout from me

Greed

Deep in the heart’s remoteness
there is quiet
In the blue darkness there is
an apparition of you

You – to arrive at the edge of you
my one birth will not do

In the creation-odyssey of arriving towards you
I’m a pilgrim
But there are so many roads
Having to choose bewilders me

Each road promises
it will lead me to you
And the roads – they speak not as themselves
the roads impersonate you
Standing in front of me
in the way of my path to you

Behind me –
There are the
many increments of my serial deaths
Shoving each death behind
I hurtle on

along the laddered track
greedy that at the destination I might find you

Labour-Song

Undiscovered by anyone
there is a city lost in the eyes

Hidden from everyone
a pond dug in the chest

Inscrutable to all
a valley vanishes in the lips

In an illegible hand
a poem is scrawled across the palm

In the eyes a city of love
In the chest a pond of hatred
In the lips – valley of your myriad songs
& across the palm a poem scrawled
from the hard labour of words pulled in a cart

I
want to be whole
in a human form
in devotion
to your love
and to labour

Water

Inside the clamour of carbon
nowhere there is – water

Inside the smoke’s wintergreen dark
there will not be any – water

Inside the grey cloud of dust
you will not find – water

Winnowing the tumult of sand
you will not suddenly discover – water

If you churn the brown earth with a stick
will you then find – water?

Rubbing two stones together
who has divined – water?

If you distil the murky pond
maybe there’ll be a few drops – of water

Now what is retained
in man:
fire
sky
earth
vitality

must be cast off
to shore what is left
of water

Body’s infinite essence
Born from itself

life-sap
elixir

For the ones to come in the future
nectar inexhaustible water

Excerpted with permission from The Dust Draws Its Face on the Wind, Avinash Shrestha, translated from the Nepali by Rohan Chhetri, HarperCollins India.