"Sensitivity is built into our DNA" : Mohan Rana

 

Four Clubs, Three Aces and a Joker — Poem by Mohan Rana

 

FOUR CLUBS, THREE ACES AND A JOKER

Even before I shuffle the cards, you know
four clubs, three aces and one joker
appear to tell me with their oblique smile
they have already revealed
what I have, what I do not have in my hands
Yet I keep hoping
this game of cards is being played according to the rules

The trains that were to arrive today,
their time had long elapsed
Every passenger who was to arrive departed long back
Perhaps I turned up late
or perhaps the trains to my destination were not there now
All I heard now was a long-drawn coarse crooning
that continued to resonate in the shadows of the ridges of my words
The weaver of thoughts
was there no more in the radiance of that lingering murk

Yet I keep playing this game of cards amidst your absence,
A wind that shivers the skin coat betwixt a startling sunshine
tests my shrivelled shadow
Thinking to myself, this body will not remain with me in future,
the one I stare at for long, standing in one corner of the station
this delay perhaps is there in some time table

 

 

-Mohan Rana

TRANSLATED FROM THE HINDI BY MOULINATH GOSWAMI

What I Was Not

 Mohan Rana's poems weave a rich tapestry of memory and nostalgia, a journeying through present living. Explore the lyrical beauty of these poems in Rituparna Mukherjee's translation in:

 

 

What I Was Not

I kept thinking, thinking, thinking

That I would say this, think that

I kept thinking the livelong day

But hesitating, I kept living somewhere else

Not even in slumber

Did it come to me unbeknownst

What I was not.

Poems:

https://thespace.ink/fiction-poetry/transcreations/what-i-was-not-and-other-poems-mohan-and-rituparna/