Poems by Jaswinder Seerat
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Krishna
God comes God goes Whether he comes or goes the salt in his throat doesn’t dry up He just rubs his lips with his flute and his body against the earth Obviously he’s lost in the time-cycle of Radha Rukmini and the Gopis He is not where he was I’m not dreaming or darkness would’ve curbed its shadow and the earth wouldn’t have been so stony The river would’ve become a stratagem of Krishna This is just an era in which a horse neighing to the flute’s music attaches itself to Arjun’s chariot and now Krishna is out of the story Translated from the Punjabi by Sarabjeet Garcha Rebirth He circles my flowerbed looking for something his own in fallen leaves The forever falling leaves surmise his presence lavishing themselves to his appearance Gathering all the leaves putting them in the flowerbed so they can crumble in the sun I wait to be reborn Translated from the Punjabi by Sarabjeet Garcha |
Jaswinder Seerat writes from the sacred city of Amritsar, Punjab. She is the author of Koila, a collection of poems in Punjabi.
Sarabjeet Garcha is a poet, editor, translator and publisher. His five books of poems include All We Have, A Clock in the Far Past and Lullaby of the Ever-Returning, in addition to a volume each of poems translated from Marathi and prose from Hindi. He has translated several American poets into Hindi, including W.S. Merwin and John Haines, and several Indian poets into English, among them Mangalesh Dabral and Leeladhar Jagoori. He has received the Fellowship for Outstanding Artists from the Government of India, the International Publishing Fellowship from the British Council, and the Godyo Podyo Probondho Award. His poems have been translated into German, Spanish, Russian, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi and Hindi. He is the founder and editorial director of Copper Coin (www.coppercoin.co.in), a multilingual publishing company based in Delhi NCR.
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