1. AT THE REFUGEE CAMP
One could see snouts of guns
Guarding two sides of a refugee camp;
One sent out bullets
And the other arguments and logics.
None, however, delivered a homeland
Nor any puked a tiny crust of bread.
***
2. CONSERVATION
Time glided over my eyes,
Crushing them altogether.
I have made a fence of cupped palms
To safeguard the few juvenile dreams
That still linger in the irises of my eyes.
Please, do not make noise!
Death, without any dream to stand by,
Is truly worthless, you know.
***
3. PRECIOUS LIFE
The precious life of most people
Wanes, even as they busy themselves
Hunting for cheap things in the marketplace
Or bargaining to slice the cost of things.
‘Precious life, precious life!’
We sing almost every second.
Thus, as we descend the knoll of prices,
We climb a hill of ashes.
***
4. HER EMPTY SHOPPING BAG
She went to the market;
An empty shopping bag hanging from her hand.
Visited shop after shop
Enquired prices of things
Gathered all those auditory images of prices in her mind
And returned home
Humming the same tragic song.
Swaying together with her newly-picked song
Was her empty bag.
***
MAHESH PAUDYAL (b. 1982) is a poet, fiction writer, lyricist and translator. A teacher of English literature at Tribhuvan University, Paudyal has authored two collections of poems, six collections of stories, one novel, one collection of plays, and three series of school textbooks. He has read his creations in Nepal, India, Hong Kong, China, Bangladesh, South Korea and the United States of America. Also a well-recognized translator, his seminal translations include Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Prison Notes and Unfinished Memoirs, three diaries of BP Koirala, Krishna Dharabasi’s Radha, Silver Cascades and Selected Nepali Short Stories — both collections of representative Nepali short stories, Dancing Soul of Mount Everest, a collection modern Nepali poems, three diaries of BP Koirala and so on, the total number going over fifty. He lives with his family in Kathmandu.
