Blind Man On A Revolving Chair
by Bhupi Sherchan

All day
like dry bamboo
dozing on its own hollowness,
repenting;
all day
like a sick dove
pecking its own breast
scratching sores;
all day
alone like a pine stand
sobbing with unexpressed pain
all day
like a flat mushroom
far from the vast display of earth and sky
planting his legs in a small place,
covering himself with a tiny umbrella;
in the evening
when Nepal shrinking into Kathmandu
Kathmandu cast aside on New Road
and New Road -trampled
beneath the feet of many people,
breaking
into stalls shops and vendors of news tea and betel;
rumors dressed up in a motley array
walk back and forth,
clucking like a hen that has laid an egg
newspapers shuffle by
and darkness here and there
settles on the footpath
frightened
by the glare of the cars
A beehive collapses in my brain
and terrified of drone and sting
I rise
like the souls on Judgment Day
and lost without "Lethe" of oblivion
I dive into a glass of wine
and forget the days that brought me here
my previous incarnation and death
In this way always
the sun rises from a tea kettle
and always in an emptied glass of wine
the sun sets
The earth on which I sit is revolving--as usual
I alone am not acquainted with
the changes all around,
a stranger to the passing scenes,
the attractions,
like a blind man at a fair
strapped down in a revolving chair

translated by Wayne Amtzis with Sulochana Musyaju

Midday In A Cold Sleep
 by Bhupi Sherchan

In the newspaper's want ads
I seek out the face of my tomorrows,
In every procession, meeting, speech
and in the files of each new plan
I search for a foothold
On the lips of the new budget
I look for assurance
From the radio announcements I solicit
a few words of consolation
I gauge with today's pay scale
the age of my family;
Notice of each vacancy
heralds my youth
With the upshot of each interview
life, like the sweat of my armpit, stinks
Someone stirs chagrin into mother's concern,
a sigh dispirits father's encouragement
I sense my sister's parted hair
fears a wife's vermilion
I feel my wife
serves me irony on the plate
An age has passed
as bearing my face like a letter of request
from door to door
I have called at each house in turn
A cold sleep
draws me into its coils,
I know
this time if I fall asleep
I will never wake again
So --
Hey, you, who line up like caterpillars!
Hey, you, letters of a slogan!
Chant those slogans louder, more, shout them out
Jump to it!  Don't let me sleep
It's the middle of the day
Wake me up, wake me!

translated by Wayne Amtzis with Sulochana Musyaju

EVENING, NEW ROAD, A BURLESQUE OF LIFE
by Bhupi Sherchan

New Road, tidied up, made over at dusk,
while women stroll, as if under the arm of a sleeveless blouse,
through that place, that neighborhood, Kichapokhari,
midst houses thrust forth like hairs in its armpits alleys,
obscenely dark, fetid--in the wide eyes of the shops,
Suzy Wong look alikes, charmed and contraceptive,
arms treaded with centipedal pricks, hasten
towards darkening lanes

Trip-enthralled in the clutch of her beat prince,
belly-bare in saffron sari and blouse, overripe melons
hoisted before her, flower baby hippie maiden
strolls down New Road--all eyes embedded in her navel
The loitering godsons of the Bo tree
spouting hard-ons, throng the benches there
Filth discarded by Public Service Commission Drainage
and jaundiced eyes rifling a newspaper
look towards the coming day

A beggar stands sentry at a newsstand
Having X-rayed the empty pockets of suited Mr. Penniless Nepali,
she asks for a penny, and Mr. Penniless Nepali
looks towards Lucky Lottery, spitting on himself as he lets fly
a balloon of abuse into the Kathmandu sky

I, on New Road,
with no reason to hang round,
New Road on my back;
to enunciate "home" with meaning
--home in the afternoon --tenant of a bar at night
I turn the wages from my latest verse
into beer and drink,
and then take the measure of New Road
plotting my next poem,
and without deliberation stride off towards the parade grounds
tossing a Bhairahawa Sugar Mills smile to the throng

I stop short on reaching Martyrs Gate
and lighting my last Lucky Strike
thrusting Kathmandu's
hollowness into the empty packet
I toss it away,
and, gazing at the Martyrs
I fling a mute question towards Martyrs Gate;
with a wan smile Martyrs Gate looks at me
and disappears into the mist

1968
translated by Wayne Amtzis with Maya Rai

CURSED HOUSE
by Bhupi Sherchan

Whenever the neighbors to the left and right
fling stones on each other's roof
the glasses of the old woman
sunning herself on the roof of this house
and the bangles of the bride looking out from the terrace
break. When at midnight the neighbors
from wherever with whatever they can grab hold of
strike out at each other...
the next morning the arthritic old man of this house
wakes to find his walking stick broken
It's like this this cursed house
This house like a plant sprouted in the midst of fire
a plant that ignites

translated by Wayne Amtzis

ON THE DARK ROAD OF LIFE
by Bhupi Sherchan

On the dark road of life
I feel success
is lit like a lamp with the dynamo of a bicycle
So long as
my legs rise and fall
pushing the pedal s
speeding on
the lamp-lit-path falls beneath me
But as soon as I tire
and my feet slow to a halt
in front of me jumps darkness
barking

translated by Wayne Amtzis

The Restless Urge For Equality
by Purna Vaidya

The Newar poet Purna Bahadur Vaidya has written a remarkable collection of poems in Nepal Bhasa: LA LA KHA (WATER IS WATER: a collection of 84 poems refracted through water). These intently crafted poems written over a twenty-year period reflect a mind intimately involved with its own reflection as it is refracted and clarified through a single element in its manifest and various forms. The long-term commitment made to the art of poetry and to insight gained through repeated encounters with a single theme should stand as a guideline for writers. Vaidya's threefold commitment--to the language he writes in, the society he lives in and to the person he would become hones itself with and against necessity. Water when seen as an elemental force, when investigated in its own right, clarifies human endeavor. It is finally not nature Vaidya is concerned with, but human nature. The mirroring force of his poetry demands that one attend to and appreciate the details of living and not turn from the inevitability and power of necessary action, be it personal, political or social.

In "The Restless Urge For Equality" a description of a river flowing through land characterized as an ongoing encounter between the freeing force of nature and bounding enclosure of civilization resolves itself with a statement of self recognition that carries with it social acquiescence and political commitment. The relentless force of water is tempered by all that resists it, but it flows on, it tempers that which resists it, and it is that tempering, that leveling that draws it on.

The Restless Urge For Equality

Before moving water rounds itself
and rises ever so slightly
with an eye to sorting out where the land slopes
where depth lies
Encountered, the world gives it flow, direction, speed
As always water's intention is to fill and raise
Where boundaries create you & me
where between yours & mine walls rise --it revolts
Gathering strength it flows,
and wherever it flows
as day follows day walls collapse,
boundaries are dismissed
In the absence of boundaries and walls
we see wider land --where water calmly, naturally, moves on
This struggle tells me
that the character of the land is uneven
Tempered by the speed of the flow
my own innate desire
is the equality I seek

In LA LA KHA, Purna Bahadur Vaidya, avoiding the rhetoric of his contemporaries, can be read as the most unlikely of political poets and the most unassuming of spiritual ones, even as his exacting descriptions purifies the basis for poetic language in Nepal today. For he has identified in nature a force that cannot be denied; staying close to that force and recognizing its qualities, he has clarified his own vocation as a poet. Through understanding nature--not praising its majesty nor playing with its illusive forms--he has explored what it is to be human. Clear yet sensual; understated, yet political--underpinning commitment with a sure sense of what is and an intent to continue until limits are unbounded and privilege is undone--these water poems distill from Nepal Bhasa a fine and bracing liquor ready to be decanted. An elixir whose essence returns us to the source and whose qualities fortify us for what needs to be done.
From Seeing Water As Water. the JOURNAL OF NEPALI LITERATURE, ART AND CULTURE. 4.1 2001.

Yes, All My Rivers Are Lahureys
by Purna Vaidya

Finding a place of rest
where their whole self can stay,
there, to calmly abide,
their restless waves asleep

But, in my land, (harbored and held
by mountains and icy peaks)
there is no place
           to remain

Cruel hills and steep
cliffs pushing down, allow no rest,
banishing all to the lowlands

Forced out of their native realm
for a foreign land

So, rubbing earthly dust onto their chests,
they leave their own place
       weeping,
                        weeping,

Ditched Till the Earth Trembles
by Purna Vaidya

Sovereign Woman
On the poetry of Banira Giri

(from the Introduction to FROM THE LAKE, LOVE)

When a voice of assured affirmation anchors itself in an act of violation and violence as victim, the words "transformation" and "overcoming" can only approximate the writer's intention. In the poem "Wound", Banira Giri does more than raise a voice against rape and the personal wound the victim bears, she transforms through the powers of language and the inner strength of adversity overcome, the stigmata of violation into an emblem of power. "Wound"--already the softening occurs, the doubling of the act, the vowels, not the disavowal, the "V" for violation, like a flag waving in the wind, like something touched not with one lip but two. And so the tongue takes over: man misleads, sentences us; woman miraculizes, brings forth out of emptiness.. and we take note --of the images drawn through the eye of her affirmation. Creation borne out of memory. Where innocence is victimized, where rape follows upon avowals of friendship, where chance meeting where brute strength overwhelms, what remains is the ad infinitum of Violation, the signs of blood of "cruel intimacy.... spread on the gravel of the crossroads like an unclaimed corpse."
"Violation!

From the outset
your every thrust
blazed as fire,
tore through the skin as thorns do,
pierced as a blade,
appeared as the night of the dark moon
But these days
your every stroke,
a mere touch,
and as for my self
I've become
oven that contains the flame,
bush that raises up thorns,
sheath that holds the blade,
fangs for the cobra's deadly poison,
darkness of the night that swallows the moon

Only intensity of language and conciseness of imagery can assimilate what has happened. The stigmata of rape like an unhealing wound, like a brand claiming an animal is turned round not at the point of entry but from the deepest recesses of consciousness. It is there that woman triumphs. Man cannot go deep enough, he can not find her to claim her, for the vehicle of his claiming lacks depth, for it is always in retreat even as it attacks. Violation is all that he is. Wound is the source of her triumph, and in that triumph resistance cries out: you have done this to me, you will not do it again.

Wound! Maul and smother me
Lick with your slathering flames
Your force converted
for I'm hardened to it
Where your weapons of thrust and violation are stored,
I burrow and hide, grazed from all angles guns afire
Flameburst upon flameburst here and everywhere
But it is surely so, violator
Violation! tearing your ears, listen
Your armory will be emptied --I will not
your armory will be emptied --I will not

Giri's voice insistent in its climactic victory resounds with an insurgent force. In "From The Lake Love" the author works with an imagined act of violence. A high mountain lake is taken to be the body of a woman that all are drawn to and partake of in a ritual of rape and dismemberment. The aware reader recoils as she is drawn in. The woman of the lake in forced submission to the many gives herself to the one who fathoms to the depths her worth. Against a preconscious memory marked by collective violation, legend would have its readers overcome trauma within the amnesia of love and the cultural rites of marriage. Beneath the beauty of the language one asks: Is this not rape? Is this not violation? Is this what culture conceals?

a woman without compare...
immersed herself, emerging
her gentle comely form turned to gold
Then and there a gaggle of youths
grabbed her, tore her to pieces
and shared her among themselves
...among them a youthful hunter
...stole away with her heart.
...On full moon nights
in the dreamlike shimmering of Sarover
...transformed into white swans
murmuring their love talk,
...waiting for the wedding procession,
...band...implements...ceremony...
hand-woven leaves for the feast.

For Giri and for the culture she seeks to reclaim in her poetry, a crime more consequential than violation is abandonment. Within her writing the ideal of wholeness, of man and woman complementing and completing, of world and beings sustaining and surpassing, is seen as a given within nature and when seen well, when understood, is taken up and affirmed in human creation and in culture. In "Pashugayatri" she portrays the cultural loss when the task of sustaining has been abandoned.

in this holy land of Pashupati,
completely helpless, bereft and naked,
pitiful Bagmati... ...stagnant within
...only scars of memory...
the rush of her waters, an encrusted scab
... through the dry banks of her chest
(she) whispers the Pashugayatri mantra..
and she is shocked
"Ay ai, Men are men after all,
though they throw a flood of filth into the Bagmati,
though they make the Bagmati a River-Of-Sand
...who is she to have them listen...?"
She herself feels ashamed, troubled, sobs
In preparation to enter the underworld for ever,
seen by no one, for the last time,
stops for a moment during the still of night,
tries to wash the feet of Lord Pashupati, but cannot
Bagmati, of only a thin line, only a name,
breathless, weak, waterless, Bagmati
disheartened while trying to bid farewell to Pashupati
the whips of sand
chase her
the whips of sand
drive her out

In a world where culture mattered, where symbol embodied living force, the writing of Banira Giri would be recognized for its sustaining power, for its capacity to project enduring sources of creativity into a mode of awareness. At the heart of her enterprise the Sovereign Female reigns. Where it should be praised, it has been diminished; where it should be established, it is abandoned; where it should be protected it is assaulted. Unfortunately the power of her voice, the intensity of her language and her willingness to take up the forms of traditional culture and revitalize them from a more deeply realized source does not warn nor awaken those who will not hear it. Where man appropriates, woman creates; where creation itself is violated, what use is poetry?

The Aborigines And The Jungle
by Shashikala Tiwari

Up

A group of aborigines
that set off towards the city
never returned again 

            I told them
            tie your belongings in a bundle
            Hide your women
           The eye of the city is poisonous
            There will be no canopy of shade
            to spend the night through
            You'll have to rest beneath your own shadow
            There will be no pond to drink from
            Quench your thirst with your own tears
            The city is the jungle of man;
            it will not be safe like the jungle of animals
            They didn't see it that way
            They followed the lamps and ended up like moths
            They sank to their death crossing the road
           Those who escaped tigers and bears
            became the victims of man 

Together with the aborigines the jungle also went under
On trees of cement creepers of wire were tangled
Iron herds began to run
The stream dried and became sand
In this way the tale of the aborigines and the jungle ended 

            Even these days when a bird sings sadness
            sitting on the electric pole,
            I remember the aborigines and the jungle
            When, thirst-maddened, the kakakul shrieks
            I remember the jungle dwellers and the jungle 

Translated by Wayne Amtzis with the author

SIDDICHARAN (by Siddicharan Shrestha)

Up

Yesterday he wasn’t, tomorrow he won’t be
Today Siddhicharan is here. He laughs, cries, walks around,
sings his own songs!

From the black depths above,
an ember rises. Whose name is alive,
extinguished it flickers
Today it wavers, tomorrow
immovable it will be

On a quest anything can happen
Eons pass. The unbound current flows smoothly
Of that, this spec is one
Reuniting, unlimited above, unbound
to the end, it reaches

A SCRAP of Advice (by Laxmi Prasad Devkota)

Up

What use a full wallet and filthy hands?

Better a full heart
nourished on nettles and greens!

TO MEET AN UNSATISFIED IMAGINATION (by Mohan Koirala)

Up

Why are we distancing ourselves from mountains and rivers?
The abandoned stream does not pass before us, we do not bend towards its waters
The rivers we have talked of are of the earth or so we thought
They are its assets –nothing else—
For which youth and age need be devoted

Seeking I find more than I imagined
Unlikely though it is a thing not seen in that process
Achieved, not achieved, attempted, not attempted
The entire life cycle moves in this very thing,
completed itself, beauty is embellished in it,
when it reaches the height of expression I do not see Everest near
Nor the other peaks and mountains
I am not exaggerating when I say I did not see dwellings nor rivers
when I tried to kiss them all

But I met a different man among men met a tall man
Met a beautiful river raised myself to the height of a mountain
Met an expansive personality

Now democracy has come to all imaginations all concepts
Now a desired flower may bloom in plants
If you have a place to go you may step out as you wish
Slowly –now nobody’s coat should tear
Slowly – nobody’s collar should tear and what of the country’s collar
Similarly nobody’s elbow should tear and what of the country’s elbow
Now nobody’s intestine should ever dry out –
the country’s intestines should not dry out
Now nobody’s sole should wear out
One should not turn from the soil – while walking

Translated by Wayne Amtzis and Mukunda Pathak