Bipin Gohil

 To the Fading Man I Sing

I sing

To the man who has

All but faded away from the walls of time.

To the man whose dim outlines

Manu’s monstrous brushes

Have tried to swamp out of centuries.

To the man whom the triedents of terror.

The might of the ‘white’, the unchallenged ‘right’

Has sought to uproot for ages.

I grope on the walls

To restore at least a fading line,

A disfigured face…

As they skin alive his words, his dreams

I try to lift downcast faces,

Pluck with my torn, bleeding hand

A lone flower that opened its buds

In a bush of forbidding thorns

And sing to the man who has  

All but faded away from the walls of time.

To A Poet at a Mushaira

Let your words

Sprout

In the uncorrupted soil of your solitude.

They will drop anchor by themselves

On the edges of men’s consciousness.

Mouth to mouth

They will go down into the depths of their blood.

Like trees of virgin woods

They will spread their canopies in the sky.

Your poetry owes nothing

To the cacophony of my mushaira,

Nor to the sickening swagger of these pygmies

Inebriated by their obscene opulence.

Leave your words to fend for themselves.

Let them drift

Down the river of time …

( tr. by K M Sherrif )