Saurindra Barik

Saurindra Barik's poems reflect his simplicity. His poems evolve out of small, apparently insignificant incidents of his daily life. The following poems are from his Sahitya Akademi Award winning anthology Akasa Pari Nibida (Intense as the Sky).

Come, let's go now
Go back home.

We had come forgetting homes and things like that
To talk a little, to become the sea for a while.
But the brimming sea doesn't let us be anything.
It is itself alone and selfish -
Like throwing cut green-coconut back to the bank
Throws everyone back to the humid swamp of
His lonely heart.

Just see how between us
Our hands entwined, it rushed in forcefully! Within the fingers
Spreading the sticky feeling of distance made us alone.
Without our knowledge into some other unknown land,
Casuarinas trees, thorny feel of sea shells,
Spilled us separately. Filled our hearts
With such a roaring salty stillness?
Like a handful of salt on a raw wound.

Enough of sea,
Let's now go back home
Into the noises of Bubu and Runu.
Let's forget ourselves, forget the sea.

Familiar Stranger

I said,
Like dry leaves that shrink at the sight of whirlwind
Within the dry horoscope of today
We keep on puzzling around
Neither past nor future.

At this she started and said -
But my flight is not like the whirling around of dry leaves
For I am an ant with wings. The two wings
Like an eyeful of eye of the sky. And I am flying
Towards my familiar unknown, known stranger
Towards a never to be achieved completeness.

Translation by Priyadarshi Patnaik

This site is designed and maintained by Arundhati Patnaik and Priyadarshi Patnaik. Copyright 2003.