Two Poems

The Earth Shall Remain

I’m sure
the earth shall remain,
if not elsewhere,
it shall remain in my bones;
as a wood louse lives in the trunk of a tree,
as a weevil lives in a seed,
the earth shall remain in me
even after doomsday;
if not, elsewhere,
in my mortality.

And one day, I shall rise
with the entire earth,
water and the tortoise,
I shall rise and set out
to meet someone
I have promised to meet.

Liberation

Able to find no path of liberation
I have sat down to write.

I want to write “Tree”
knowing that writing tree is becoming a tree.
I want to write “Water,”

“Human,” I want to write “Human,”
hand of a child,
the face of a woman,

With all my vigor,
I want to throw words toward humans,
knowing, they will do nothing to a human being.
On a busy street, I want to hear that explosion
which occurs, when the words and humans collide,

knowing nothing will happen from my efforts of writing,
I want to write.

Translations from the Hindi