READ DEVKOTA: Originally writen in English by the poet himself

From: "The Necessity of a Strongly Organised Writers Union for Nepal" (The first paragraph of an unpublished essay in original English)

When I compare the lot of the writers of the U.S.S.R. with those of Nepal, I feel like comparing contrary poles--where there is perpetual sunshine on the North, we find eternal darkness in the South. Writers' fates are determined by socio-political philosophies and the systems that evolve out of them. We, the writers of Nepal, are the most unfortunate of human tribes, robbed of our royalties, denied our copy-rights, no human laws working our literary defences, general frustration writ large upon our shrivelled brows, making our rough shifts for mere existence as if we apologised to live in a society where, amidst general apathy and negligence, we command the best brains. We are a scattered lot, a routed regiment of intellectuals, pushed back by a political tide, that, started by ourselves, has rushed so far ahead of us, towards exploitative heights that we are left behind merely like scum and filth, too base to be lifted up to the positions of our natural claims. And the boasted democracy of today, whose army is a feudal and profiteering group of sordid self, cut off from the masses, divorced from popular interests, nourished on big lies and brazenfaced propaganda, wirepulled by interests, confidently blalanced on a tottering economy, sounding its programmes and projects like blaring bugles of nonsense, conscious of its own unworthiness, yet superciliously demonstrative of its ownn achievements, is a democracy without the people, a vision of equality among giants and dwarves, mountains and dales, of liberty among a slavery of economic dependence, and fraternity among a riot of crossing multifarious interests. And it is, above all, a democracy without Enlightenment; for it consists of a worship of the Forces of the Dark, a scorn for the Forces of Light, a system in which the sincere thinker is placed at the tail and the selfish wirepuller at the head. It is a democracy where the torch-bearers have no place and no claims on respect. We are going to flare up popular consciousness with political doggerel and cheap black print, for we never credited the people with any healthy natural instinct for higher light and truth. Our democracy is built on the castle turrets. It is a fine ivory tower for the few. And therein the writer of today has no place and no function to perform.

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From: “The Electric Bulb” by Laxmi Prasad Devkota (Extracts from an unpublished essay.)

No hairy ass…overloaded and overmiserable, drooping and dejected, dead spent and halting, in despair of life-energy, yet apologising to live, helplessly staring at the world with just a flicker of low level consciousness, a dying hide and a frothful mouth, presents a more pitiable plight of helpless inanity than the electric bulb in our room….

Our electric light is diseased…. Citizens in Kathmandu are denizens of twilight who have deserved a degree of light proportioned to their level of general civic consciousness….

I feel as if I were unworthy of democracy. One who cannot feel alive to the ugliness of one’s surroundings, to the presence of one’s powerful wants, one who shows no measurable degree of reaction to the denial of home light, be he ever so blatant about abstract political ideals, is never a true democrat, never a conscious citizen. Is it conceivable in any civilised system of democracy that not the majority alone but all the citizens of the capital never raise a voice against dying light, against visible darkness, that denies them possibilities of reading, writing and working during the night?... The protesting voice of conscious individuality is absent even in those who rule and command.

The fact is that we people require no light, or if we profess to be its lovers, flickers are enough for us philosophers of silence…. Silence is balm where demonstration is a fever…. Our democracy is a newly delivered puppy, still blind, still adjusting the slit in its eyes to the dazzling light of a new day.

The tungsten wire merely glows a dull red…. It must reflect the actualities of social life, the dullness of our municipal existence, the inanity of our present day democracy…. Electricity asks you to go to sleep on a soft pillow, without further nocturnal suicide. The sun is enough light for twentieth century at Kathmandu.

I felt like writing a lyric of despair about my literary plight, but I refrained from writing one lest it should run to the length of an epic. The degree of photo intensity in my room feels like a measure of public encouragement to my literary efforts….

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The Brook

1
Down lines of pine and eglantine
Serpentine in my falling
I touch the woodbines and the vines
Mellifluously calling.

2
Calling on links of ripply winks
To ocean anemone
On silver kinks that pass through chinks
Of mountain chalcedony.

3
On stones of silver tones I ring
Make music of the mountain
Intonating notations fine
To make his sonant fountains.

4.
I linger as a singer
Gingerly in my saree
Of silver threads and leap adown
Singing my charivari.

5.
I wobble on my ripples
In which the sunbeams dabble
I double as I babble on
And on the pebbles babble.

6
I rally all my ripples
And make a sparkling sally
And dally down to daffodils
Into a dappled valley.

7
My silver bells a-jingle
Mingle upon the shingles
I jangle as I wrangle on
Illuming little ingles.

8.
I titter as I glitter
Beneath the blossom's twitter
I fritter fairy jewels
Borne on my silver litter.

9
I murmur, murmur merrily
A marine mermaid funning
Remembering my marine home
By airy rumours running.

10
By pleasant haunts of pheasants
And rainbow wings aflutter;
By peewit-haunted woodlands
I spurt, I race, I sputter.

11
I wander, wander as I run
Meandering in meshes
I squander all my music
Philandering my cresses.

12
I wield my water chisel
Rounding the angled boulder;
And carve my fretted bank curves
Singing a fairy moulder.

13
On earth's incline I wind and twine
Upon her pull I scurry;
To find her random wrinkles
Romances in my hurry.

14
Liquidly skidding scud I down
Love's path divinely fretted
The sunshine on the tears of life
In lovely lays all netted.

15
I purl and whirl and twirl my kinks
A girl in woodlands merry
I swirl, my silver scarves unfurl,
Curl fairy pearls to ferry.

16
By kindling briar blooms I flow
Spindling on brindled gravel
I scintillate on diamonds
As down the thorps I travel.

17
I murmur, murmur, murmur on,
Remembering my ocean;
For life is flow, the reaching slow,
But quick is quick emotion.

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READ DEVKOTA: The poet's own translation of his Nepali work

The Swallow and Devkota

The swallow and Devkota
Share the same nest and the same trait.

How do the tiger and the lamb drink water together on this bank!
Sitting down does Nature thread
Both hearts in a string.
It isn't afraid, I've no doubt!
Both the beings have a false cause to be awake
At midnight in a room.
Falling low, coming downward there's
Fire in this world,
Going high beyond limits there's
The cold snow of eminence.
Living in the middle
Modest fluttering,
One lives in pleasures sweet!

Look! Right here is stretched
The long, thin electric wire!
How do the live currents flow in that!
On that the swallow sits on guard all through the night
The poet's heart also takes fitful naps alike.
The heart smells the moistened earth
Gazed upon by the heaven through tears.
Through all days
The heart pecks and pricks
For the means to make love's mansion
In the mind!
In the solitude of night while
The world falls asleep
The eyes of imagination, always alert, begin to doze.

Sweet are the friends, the poems, the female one
The light with self!
For a firm hold on life in this world
Are its 'cheep' and 'peep'.
To pass your honeymoon you chose Nepal
The place that is healthy and high.
Silently does the tie spiritual
Between the swallow and Devkota weep.
Seeing our creative pain
The starry sky like the eyes of compassion,
Peeping through a crack in the window,
Falls down rolling in a star.
The swallow and Devkota
Share the same nest and the same trait.

We came chasing the spring
The dream flowers become real!
We sang the song of Gauri-Shankar,
The song that's the duet of Prakriti and Purush.
The melodious creation of that beak and this taste-bud
Is our own abode.
The ages' children may open their eyes
Looking far ahead!
We sight constantly
The mud trodden by every feet
That is the means of our abode.
Such bricks and such mud are found all over Nepal
All over the world!
All over the days, fluttering, flapping
The nose smells the earthy smell.
Trying to lift the clay softened by heaven's tears
It pecks and pricks,
The swallow and Devkota
Share the same nest and the same trait.

When the young ones hatched in the nest
Grow their wings,
We in fondness wish
To take them to the forest to make them fly.
Then, will fly high
We the loving couple,
The swallow couple of poetry and poet.
Flapping shall we reach the sea-shore
To turn back once
And to look through tears
The forest of human beings.
In happiness will then our souls submerge.
The labour-pain,
The anguish felt for their abode will vanish.
The swallow and Devkota
Share the same nest and the same trait.

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The Lunatic

Surely, my friend, insane am I
Such is my plight.

I visualize sound.
I hear the visible.
And fragrance I taste.
And the ethereal is palpable to me.
Those things I touch--
Whose existence the world denies,
Of whose shape the world is unaware.
I see a flower in the stone--
when wavelet-softened pebbles on the water's edge,
In the moonlight,
While the enchantress of heaven is smiling unto me.
They exfoliating, mollifying,
Glistening and palpitating,
Rise before my eyes like tongueless things insane,
Like flowers,
A variety of moonbirds,
I commune with them as they do with me,
In such a language, friend,
As is never written, nor ever printed, nor ever spoken,
Unintelligible, ineffable all.
Their language laps the moonlit Ganges shore,
Ripple by ripple,
Surely, my friend, am I insane,
Such is my plight.

Clever and eloquent you are!
Your formulas are ever running correct.
But in my calculations one minus one is always one.
You work with your senses five,
With the sixth I operate.
Brains you have, my friend,
But the heart is mine.
To you a rose is but a rose,
It embodies Helen and Padmini for me.
You are strong prose,
But I am liquid poetry.
You freeze, I melt,
You decant when I go muddy.
When I am muddled, you are clear.
And just the other way about.
You have a world of solids,
Mine is one of vapour
Yours is thick and mine is thin.
You take a stone for hard reality,
I seek to catch a dream,
Just as you try to grab that cold sweet, minted coin's round reality.
Mine is a badge of thorns,
But yours is one of gold and adamant.
You call the mountains mute,
But orators do I call them.
Surely, my friend, a vein is loose in my brain.
I am insane,
Such is my plight.

In the frigid winter month,
I basked in the first white heat of the astral light.
They called me crazy.
Back from the burning-ghat,
Blank-eyed I sat for seven days,
They cast their eyes on me and called me one possessed.
Shocked by the first streak of frost on a fair lady’s tresses,
For a length of three days my sockets filled and rolled.
For the Buddha, the enlightened one, touched me in the depths,
And they called me one distraught.
When I danced to the bursting notes of the harbinger of the spring,
They called me one gone crazy.
One moonless night, all dead and still,
Annihilation choked my soul,
And up I jumped upon my feet.
And the fools of the world put me in the stocks.
I sang with the tempest one day,
And the wise-acres of the world dispatched me down to Ranchi.
And once when at full stretch I lay upon my bed,
As one but dead,
A friend of mine pinched me so sharp.
And said, "Oh mad man,
Is thy flesh now dead?"
Year by year such things did occur,
And still, my friend, I am insane,
Such is my plight.

I have called the Nawab’s wine all blood.
And the courtesans all corpses.
And the king a pauper.
I have denounced Alexander the Great.
And I have deprecated the so-called high-souled ones.
And the insignificant individual I have raised,
Up an ascending arch of praises,
Into the seventh heaven.
Your highly learned men are my big fools.
Your heaven is my hell.
Your gold, my iron.
Friend, your piety, my sin.
Where you feel yourself clever,
There, there,
I find you a stupid innocent.
Your progression is regression to me.
Such is the upsetting of values, friend,
Your universe to me is but a hair.
Surely, my friend,
I am absolutely moon-struck,
Moon-struck indeed,
Such is my plight.

I find the blind the people’s pioneers.
The cave-penancer do I find a runaway, the deserter of humanity.
And those who climb the platform of lies do I declare to be but dancers dark.
And I declare the defeated ones the splendid laurelled victors.
Advancement is retreat.
May be I am a squint
Or that I am a crack, friend,
Just but a crack.

Look at the strumpet-tongues adancing of shameless leadership!
At the breaking of the backbones of the people’s rights!
When the sparrow-headed bold prints of black lies on the papers,
Challenge the hero in me called Reason,
With conspiracy false,
Then redden hot my cheeks, my friend,
And their colour is up.
when the unsophisticated folk quaff off black poison with their ears
Taking it for ambrosia,
And that before my eyes, my friend,
Then every hair rises on end,
Like the serpent-tresses of the Gorgons,
Every one so irritated!
When I see the tiger pouncing upon the innocent deer,
Or the big fish after the smaller ones,
Then even into my corroded bones, my friend,
The terrible strength of the soul of Dadhichi--the sage,
Enters and seeks utterance.
Like a clouded day crashing down to earth in the thunderbolt,
When man regards a man as no man,
Then gnash my teeth and grind my jaws, set with the two and thirty teeth,
Like Bhimsen's teeth, the terror-striking hero's,
And then,
Rolling round my fury-reddened eyeballs,
With an inscrutable sweep,
I look at this inhuman human world
Like a tongue of fire.
The machine parts of my frame jump out of their places,
Disordered and disturbed!
My breath swells into a storm,
Distorted is my face,
My brain is in a blaze,
Like a wild conflagration.
I am infuriated like a forest fire,
Frenzied, my friend,
As one who would devour the world immense,
Surely, my friend,
I am the moonbird of the beautiful,
The iconoclast of ugliness!
The tenderly cruel!
The bird that steals the celestial fire!
The child of the tempest!
I am the wild eruption of a volcano insane!
Terror personified!
Surely, my friend,
I am a whirl-brain, whirl-brain,
And such is my plight!

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READ DEVKOTA: Originally written by the poet in European languages

Navabhavodgar:

["Navabhavodgar" or "Nine Expressions" consists of a similar content expressed in nine different languages by Mahakavi Devkota. The poem is written in Sanskrit, Nepali, Hindi, Newari, Bengali, Urdu, English, French and German languages. --PD]

FRENCH

Quand le matin ouvre l'or
Où la neige de l'orient pur
Dans le ciel de Népal brille
La gloire magnifique de haute taille
Indescriptible nous la joie
Ascends déjà au ciel notre roi
Padma Shum Shere Jung.
Le successeur du success
De Joodha Shum Shere Jung
Il a pris bien soin
De la contrée au plus haut point
Sa gloire retenti déjà loin
Vive notre Premier pour long temps
Padma Shum Shere Jung.

GERMAN

Nach Abdankung glorreich
Von Joodha Shum Sher Jung
Den thron aufsteigt der herrlich
Padma Shum Sher Jung,
Der heilige Geistlicher
Verliess wann alle fuer Gott,
Weinte ganz das Nepal Land
Fuer Fuehrer Joodha den Lotse
Hier ist das Land geregiert
Von Padma Shum Sher Jung,
Lang lebe! Unser geistlicher,
Grossartig sei die Herrlichkeit;
Lang lebe! Lebe lang!
Sei er beruhmtester Koenig
Um die Regierung recht zu fuehren
So fuehlen wir fuer den Mangel von Joodha
Den Kummer nicht, gar nicht.

READ DEVKOTA: Translated by Others

The Bird

1.
The night is cold
The bird will rest in this nest
At first light it will fly away!
2.
In the vast wilderness
a green branch, and in its crotch
the bird has flown
to take shelter;
It collected the passion twigs,
arranged them for warmth;
It laid the eggs with love
and covered them with its feathers;
The dream bird grows ecstatic
asleep in the storm, drunk!
3.
This is no place to live forever,
The road winds beyond the mountain!
Do you see this nest in your dream
as good and lovely and truthful?
In the morning, the storm
blows away this nest,
Tears wash away your dream,
The fruits in your claws
loosen and fall.
Awake and realize, O Bird!
Quit this halting place and fly!
Even while dreaming, envision
where the wings should lead you;
You have to access that shelter
where no wind nor flame can enter.

(Translation: Shreedhar Lohani) ^top

The Celestial Ganga

1.
Faintly flows the celestial Ganga
in the monsoon sky.
Who are you? A stream
of dust, or imagination?
Countless are the sands
on your bank.

2.
A splinter from a blazing granule,
a gem in fondness;
Here we, the nested worms,
look at you with breath suspended;
Waves of wonder roll
in your waterways.

3.
Our ages breathless
swam in the waves;
On wings of imagination
you flow, transcending knowledge;
On which hillside were you born,
your melody echoes from the ocean, though?

4.
Who will sport this glowing cracker?
In what fondness?
Whose blue mind’s sparking is it?
A bird of light flapping up
its wings? Like feelings,
in the faint fog, welling?

5.
Proximal foamy
in no time,
full dazzling diamonds round
widen up my eyes!
Hearts stop
on your sandy banks.

6.
Is someone pulsating today
with ripples of emotion?
O poetry of eternity!
O stream of winking suns
waving sinuous you flow
in the blue heavens.

7.
Our hearts connect
in the fountain!
In me emotions rage,
hers scatter in heaven;
In fondness meet
eternity’s two ends!

(Translation: Shreedhar Lohani) ^top

The Song of the Depths

In the full-moon splendor
surging, swelling, furrowing deep
rise waves that break along
the shores of language.

In my life-breath resounds
the song of the depths,
waves of feelings rise
billowing, surging.

Making the waves effervesce,
rays pull
and extract foams of joy,
heaving,

lifting the whole ocean up,
moving each molecule of water,
washing the dark with the moonlight,
creating a great commotion.

In the splashing of each wave,
in the commotion of the heart,
the song of the depths resounds
humming an unbroken melody.

(Translation: Padma Devkota. Original title: "Purnimako Jaladhi." First published in Gorkhapatra of 1934, November 30 Marga 15, 1991 Friday. Considered by Biographer Nitya Raj Pandey to be the first published poem of Laxmi Prasad Devkota.) ^top

Hymn to Saraswati

(The following poem is the opening stanza of the epic Sulochana. I have supplied the title.)

Twang the sinews of the heart,
seducing it with a fresh melody,
You with the strings in your hands,
O destroyer of ignorance.

Like the first rising star
of the morning
you are a shower of light
upon a New Age.

Resonating each sweet note
of softly trembling rays,

sensitizing the world,
awakening it,
causing the fragrance-laden breeze
to blow

kindling
with energetic fingers
new voices
filled with golden desires,

creating the effulgence
of a New Age with a smile,
Mother!
paint the Nepali sky,
animating with fresh hues
the foundation lines
of a new world.

(Trans: Padma Devkota) ^top

Birth Anniversary

Twenty-five drops of liquid pearls
have dripped from the water-clock,
Twenty-five birds have flown across the sky
singing songs of joys and sorrows
Twenty-five steps have I taken
towards the funeral pyre.

Celebrating my birthday, ah!
I have wept this time
silently shedding lovely, laden tears
in memory of bygone years.
Twenty-five winters and twenty-five springs
of that first, sweet, honeyed life
have left the dregs behind:
burdens, anxieties, boredom,
an attractive picture now faded,
the necessity of crawling in the sweltering heat.

Twenty-five times the earth has swirled,
progress has counted twenty-five steps.
The hero climbing up the hill
has taken twenty-five difficult slopes.
Hard and genuine labour has reaped
many golden harvests,
O, the music of the heart
leads me step by step towards the grave.
As I sit counting my lazy fingers
the king of the heart encourages me to rise.
While I've been dreaming, O Lord!
the sun has approached the sun-set peak.
I have forgotten your message;
fill me with a moment's enlightenment.

I have spent this human life like an animal.
There was a spark in my heart;
the fog has descended over it.
I now tremble and weep.
Either kindle or dowse this flame of life!
Give me a heart that can weep and shed pearly tears,
give winter the ornament of sprouts,
circulate a new awakening,
uplift a fallen one.

(Trans: Padma Devkota) ^top

I

I am a subtle vibration of earth and sky
A grain of sesame
So fine!
Who can realize
A spark of the heart?
An inidividual consciousness
In the vast sea of consciousness,
A drop of water.

I rise
As I fall
No end to my strength.
I create the world, I posess the world--
A flash of the moment
I experience creation, perpetuation and dissolution
Of each moment.

In my mind--the blue depth of the Sky--
Exist
The penance, the prayer and the peace
Of the straightforward and the oblique
Of my self's Air,
All these discharges mix and mingle in the Water
A bubble of Water.

Wherever the boundary of the heart
Touches humanity
I am infinite energy and light divine
The eternal spark of the age.

(Trans: Padma Devkota) ^top

Song of the Nightingale

What says this nightingale?
Well-formed downs of tear cover the skies,
Undulating like waves that billow within the heart
towards the queen-moon of loveliness.
With grief-laden youths in mind the nightingale sings
the essence of their plight;
She cleaves the silence with her voice,
a heart-ravisher with her song.

Like gods who churned nectar from the ocean,
annihilating the essence of all words
To create an universal sound, tremulous and rhythmic,
causing sweet sadness of the lonely heart to surge,
Opening her calyx-beak she sings, O tearful softness!
emitting subtle fluid fragrance,
Awakening something within each heart,
rendering the earth into a globe of feeling.

While flowers speak through fragrance,
the colourful language of passion is thirst;
This is the song of the air-borne weeping bumble-bee,
this is the story of life.
This is indeed the laconic language of Prakriti and Purusha,
this is the reverberating youth,
This is a drop of Sruti essence, a poet's emotion,
a vase of love.

This is the murmur of water,
its woeful flow towards the ocean,
This is the language of night addressed to the moon,
the shimmering of the dew,
The fluttering of the moth toward the flame,
the flickering of the flame toward the moth,
This is the bubbling heart of the tidal wave
recalling a dream.

Light embraces shadow and plays on the water,
memory on nothingness,
A sense of something being somewhere else but not with me
distresses me somewhat.
"Come, come," a glimmer seems to call, how unforgettably elusive
is this touch of imagination!
Deep imbedded impressions quicken each aching cell,
nourishing only the desire to weep.

Beautiful creation, Nature, or she,
who, watchful at the crossroads,
Having well-adorned herself, waiting restlessly,
with lowered head, not united with her lover as yet,
Weeps within some deep spot of her heart
beyond a cloud of tears;
The bird echoes and scatters around
the language-transcending song of that heart.

Young queens of all times and places weep
cleansing their loneliness;
The soul shatters the clod to express itself,
triumphant over the fragrance of the flower.
What mellifluence is this? The passion in the nightingale's voice
revivified in death!
Speak, speak, sweet nightingale! I too am with you
having transcended meaning, enjoying myself.

Opening the calyx is designing a cup
that will contain the water drops;
The flowers that bloom will weep, their hearts brimming
with tears that glisten, poor souls!
This bird, answering the sadness of the flower's heart,
Emits just two syllables,
And governs the fine art of happiness and of sorrow
of the entire world.

Where the clod touched by the sun's rays
commenced the procreation of love,
Seeking language the grass grew into a flower,
singing a lachrymatory song;
Turning into a bird, it spilled into the ears,
expressing acute grief:
Language is the awakening of all times in the heart,
a divine boon, a curse.

"Plee-plee-plee" is the first word of the yet unexpressed heart,
the thirst and water at birth;
This is the language of love when earthlings dream of the moon
which, poised in the apex of the sky,
Draws the heart with the essence of all loveliness;
the nightingale begins to sing:
With what anguish she recalls all who have existed
since the beginning of the earth.

Usha wept longingly, twisting her white limbs
on a bed of velvet flowers,
Nostalgic for the meaningful dream, bereaved by the sunrise,
having lost her heaven, poor girl!
All the flowers of the forest wept
surveying the daughter of Banasura;
You must have learnt the song of sadness there,
O say, sweet bird!

Even as the sweet breezes scattered and dropped
the blossoming white and peanut-coloured flowers,
Profusely shedding tears of sorrow on the breast,
expressive with the moonlight,
Becoming someone's Radha in her heart,
this young and divine Samyogita
Bubbled up a flood of tears in a solitary murmur
lost in this enchantment.

Janaki chanted these very tunes to herself,
lost in the memory of Lord Rama;
Krishna's flute sounded the same melody
as it echoed on the banks of Yamuna.
Helene probably weeps similar sad tunes
that turn love into tragedy
Shedding very lovely drops of sadness
beyond the vapours of war.

This is a pang, a sweet pang, of the greatest sorrow,
this is a luxurious grief,
A globe, sweet and voiceless, which, if difficult to bear,
may yet be rewarded with paradise.
This is the golden tinge of the body, this is the emotion,
this is the holy abode of Gauri and Bhola,
Sing your plee-plee-plee O nightingale! each heart must express
its inner world of tribulations.

This is the graceful murmur of the calyx,
the pupil drowned in a life of emotion;
This is the voice of thirst, the ancient story
of Prakriti and Purusha, the dual creative forces;
This is sad youth, self-expressing love,
the primal queen of lyrics;
This is the snowy peak, the refuge of the world,
this is the heart-beat within.

The shadow of the densely clouded sky may descend,
pour, O pour profusely!
Lightning may flash, O start!
with intermittent memories in the heart.
Drops may fall, trees and vines undulate,
the air will carry the vapour,
Thus the world may continue, weighed down hearts
may again utter the same grief-laden songs.

Hearts may invite hearts, water water drops,
youth may invite youth,
The thirsty ones may speak, transcending time and cage,
finding an outlet in music.
The grass-cutter's girl may sprinkle the water of her heart
even as the sickle flashes,
Whistling a new dream of the heart, someone may ascend the slope,
a love-worshipping grass cutter.

Pour, pour your full-throated voice forever,
O nightingale in the cage!
The Vedas say as much—longing souls
turned to the exquisite dawn;
Enmeshing the heart here with argent moonlight,
giving a little indication,
Thirstily have I also uttered my song beyond meaning
slightly transcending this clod.

(Trans: Padma Devkota)

^top

From: Nepali Shakuntal Epic (Canto I)

1.
Opening eyes closed long in meditation,
noticing vines wave their blossoms delightfully in the breeze,
feigning playful forgetfulness with “Who are you, O say?”
causing Gauri to weep,
then cheering her up with a smile,
may Lord Shiva bless her with an embrace.

2.
The glorious Golden Age once glowed in the eastern sky
and well-formed patterns adorned the dream-like clouds,
this very light caught in the eyes of birds resonated as songs.
O Bharati, mother of speech, fill the sky over the land of Bharat
with that splendour.

3.
I for one relish great stories of the ancient world,
of the rise of Bharatvarsha, of the essence of snowy effulgence,
recalling the scent of flowers even on chilly days
a lonely cuckoo yearns for such days to return to the north.

(Trans: Padma Devkota)

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From: “Imagination” (Laxmi Nibandha Sangraha. 3rd. ed. 1963. pp167-168.)

To me, Bharat does not mean that heap of earth, which is the Himalayas, and which, standing as a wall in the north, is bound on three sides by the sea. I see Bharat as an imprint on the canopy of the heart. Genuine Bharat shines in the imagination of Vyasa, in the poetry of Valmiki, in the works of Kalidas, and in the imaginative quest and true conclusions of the sages. My Bharat is vast and no other country can vie with it. The beautiful stories of origin of our ancestors, the flashes of Vedic truths, the true enlightenments of ancient men, those billions of statues and idols that reflect eternal truth, skills and pictures, those exquisite expressions of devotion and sentiments that are the culture and civilisation of Bharat— in these I find the true identity of Bharat. To me, Shakuntala is not an imaginary woman, nor can Yudhisthira be just a shade to me. The race of Bharat survives even today on the dynamic reality and legitimacy of Shree Ramchandra. The Englishman’s cleverness is trying to teach us to call Krishna a historic person or an ancient king; but Bharat is alit with the universal truth of Krishna. If I can fully impress people with the belief that Lord Krishna does not exist, then I can bid farewell to twenty million souls of the Hindus from this world. To me the same truth of which Vyasa spoke still exists in Brindavan. I cannot live in a Hindu world with the belief that Saraswati is an imaginative idol of spiritual power. To me, the swan-mounted mother is just as real as that awareness of truth, and of faith, with which I spoke to her in my dream some day. She told me, “Write poetry.” I replied, “I don’t know how.” Then she herself wrote one stanza in red letters, like those of my late father’s, and recited it. This I immediately learnt by heart. O, the pang of forgetting that stanza! Perhaps the world would have gazed with awe at that truth become impenetrable as a dream stanza, but to me there would linger a great magic in truth. There I would often have lovingly read an expression where the meaning of eternity could not be found. But alas! Because of my own negligence, I lost the four-line treasure that was slimmer than mantra and deeper than meaning.

(Translation: Padma Devkota)

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Evening

Now softly spreads a rosy sheen
as evening on light feet
alights on the sunset peak,
the silver sun in her hand
becomes a golden tray.
Heaven's lovely gate,
an artistic display of divine art,
opens slowly
as the radiant evening nymph
descends.

Rosy faced and golden,
she spreads a shawl of cloud as she touches
radiant rungs with her feet;
glancing at the earth she darts
a sweet, enchanting smile.
O, the westward flight of a crazed heart.
The world lulls in lovely colours,
mountains flame up, the sky shines,
the greenery billows
in the soft breeze.

Lovers hold the charming image
of a peaceful lake in their hearts,--
like the one that is clearly reflected
in the poet's heart:
serene and lovely.

The whole world dreams of a land of beauty.
The heart is borne, expands and reaches
beyond the boundary of the boundless world.

In the infancy of civilization,
in quest of beauty,
each day on the road of life
evening comes cheerfully to people.
Each day, receiving her smile,
each day, drinking of this wine,
each day, spilling the heart all over it,
man has progressed.
A lovely banquet of beauty
the nourishment of the heart's vine, enchanting,
with its sap a bloom,
all the flowers soft emotions.
Inside this expands
all the main roots of life.

We dream.
We receive lovely insights
in Mother Nature's lap.

Evening came, smiled charmingly,
spread an effulgence over life.
She released a myriad soft emotions.

(Translation: Padma Devkota)

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Towards Dashain

That goat is eating
Real grass!
We here have a different
Foodstuff,
Thorns! Thorns!
That is black, our colour is white,
Deep white!
What a fat, defiant animal it is,
Wild and free!
Beware of Dashain!
Its sacrifice,
Our celebration!
How far away it will be then!

(Translation: Padma Devkota)

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A Golden Daybreak

Once, a day of gold will break:
This land will smile with joie-de-vivre;
The zestful clouds will gather high;
The waters will sing with nimbleness.

The bird will stir and give a call;
And temples all will ring their bells;
The breeze will also fragrance waft;
The heart will call all flowers up.

It will rove around the world,
And brighten up the high Himal;
It will bring cool drops of water,
And redeem all growth with brilliance, once.

(Translation: Shreedhar Lohani and Padma Devkota)
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From: “Ajima,” a short story by Laxmi Prasad Devkota.

Indeed, nothing troubles women like the Rahu of barrenness. It is this that eclipses their life. A woman’s life, life’s self-support itself, lies in giving life to earth. Her sole supremacy over man lies in her ability to become a mother. Women find no other plant worse than the fern. Moreover, the world always despises the desert. Were the earth barren, even the gods would not protect her. Respect for motherhood depends on the ability to give life to the world. After first bestowing the competence of motherhood with the ornamentation of youth and earning for her victory over man, it is more agonizing than death for a woman’s soul to be made a defective coin. When she suspects sterility, a woman will unite heaven and earth to get rid of this blemish. She feels as if her breasts are hollow; her laps empty; her life dark! Her heart understands that only her glow will not remain. Something to love and nurse, an apple of the eye, a tiny smiling Krishna, a bit energetic, mischievous, like Makhanchor; a bit like a single bloom, a complete living weight that sticks to the bosom, that rejecting all the others attempts to attach itself to one, looks one at the face and smiles; something which, when placed on the laps of a man, he is infatuated with it and wears his peacock plumes of victory over the whole world; some solid right that others cannot snatch away; a golden glow of ones’ life; a lisping god who comes to the earth to learn the language; some such living thing, a creation achieved from one’s whole resource, the joy of which having conquered a near death pang of delivery attempts to conquer death itself; such a thing is the precious and mysterious wealth of women. Without this, life is impoverished; sterilized; weeps; is nipped. Even at the deathbed, the corners [of the eyes] are wet with pain in the heart.

(Translation: Padma Devkota)
Source: Laxmi Katha Sangraha. 2nd. ed. Lalitpur: Sajha Prakashan, 1982 (2039 bs). ^top

Dust

I become water, and mingle
with my country’s dust;
I drop down weeping ever
melting into tears.

In this fragrant dust
my ego dissolves;
A flower I'm born
for thousands to savor.

(Translation: Shreedhar Lohani and Padma Devkota) ^top

READ DEVKOTA: Devkota's translation of his contemporaries

The Parrot in the Cage

--Lekhnath Paudyal
(Translated by L.P. Devkota)

A parrot called a bird, a twice-born child,
By Fate into an iron cage beguiled,
I find, O God, nor peace nor quiet rest,
For even in a dream I lie oppressed.

My parents and relations that there are,
Do in a forest corner dwell afar.
To whom shall I my agonies outpour,
From this, my iron cage, lamenting sore?

Sometimes my tears roll down my swelling eyes,
At times I feel a corpse, my spirit flies,
At other times I madden and I jump,
Recalling woodland pleasures with a lump.

A poor and little forest wanderer I,
Fed on wild fruits, delighted who did fly,
Have been by Fate allured into this cage,
Destiny, O, has strange mysterious ways.

How far might I have freely roamed and flown,
Into what different countries soared and gone!
Alas! In vain, why Fate has me beguiled,
Into this dungeon, a forest-wandering child.

Cool waters and cool shades of verdant wood,
Really delicious fruits to pick for food.
Ah! All those things are vanished dreams today,
What now remains? A fear, my mind must sway.

Delightful shades of forests, rich and green,
Affection for the dear ones that have been
Feasting on food and wandering in the wild
Have now become but dreams to this poor child.

My aged ailing parents for me pine,
Tears in their eyes, dejected, dropping brine,
They may be everyday beating their breast,
Our close ties broken, Fate has us oppressed.

I see but enemies all around me lie,
There’s not a thing on which I can rely.
What shall I do? And how effect a flight?
To whom unburden woes in this sad plight?

The bird to whom the open boundless blue
Was field for flights of pleasure to renew
Has now, alas, for his life’s single stay
A narrow cage of iron here today.

Seeking to break this dungeon open here,
Against the bars that check my free career,
The hard-struck beak is blunted, wings and feet
Are cramped. How shall I pass long days? Defeat!

Sometimes the cramping cold, sometimes the heat,
A prattling now, and then a silent seat.
After the varying whims of boys that play,
My fate changes her course perverse today.

When I recall the shows sad Fate displays,
Then like a mad thing do I pass my days,
My tears pour down, then cracks and breaks my breast,
My heart constantly wails by Fate oppressed.

Dark apprehensions in long waves arise,
Shocked and bewildered, I survey the skies.
Without Death’s call the life-breath cannot cease,
Excruciating must I end my lease.

A stinted measure of some third class rice,
That, half a fill, doth Destiny devise.
I cast a thirsty glance upon the pot
Devoid of water, such is my life’s sad lot.

Dry is my throat, my bondage sharp and tight,
A prating still compelled, I hate downright.
Should I refuse to speak, brandishing cane,
They threaten me with thrashing once again.

One says, “Look here! This is an ass’s colt!”
Another says, “He is displeased! Behold!”
A third induces me God to repeat,
Says, “Atmaram! Read on! Be famed! A wit!”

What sort of fellow is this tiny life?
How comes he here? What food and of which type,
Takes he within this cage? There’s none to know.
And so my heart must tingle in my woe.

To be a life subjected to a bond,
And to be forced to callers to respond.
Strange Fate! Thou giv’st me yet such stinted measure
Of sustenance! How hard, they cruel pleasure.

Hard Providence! Thou didst me just provide
With power of speech and reasoning, my pride,
And this has been the parent of my woes—
Scolding and threats, and a confinement close.

Man must indulge in strange and merry sport,
Anguishing me, a cage for my resort.
How sinful is this human course, this crime,
Help me escape, O Pitying God sublime!

The human race hostile to virtues fair,
Exploits the worthy till the breast dries sheer.
Till winged breath be taken not away,
How should it be content or kind today!

So long as on this wide terrestrial plain
A single human being shall remain,
O Lord! Let not a parrot’s life be given,
Suddenly comes a sense to me, O Heaven!

Last update: November 27, 2009

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