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Standing in a Market / Suman Pokhrel


Lost in its maze

Buried in its sound

I’m reading this market--

Listening to its crescendo.

-How much is this cock?

-No, I’m not going

-Come, what may!

-Oh, look at the other side!

-Yesterday morning, that is.

-Oh, how did you gain such weight?

This market

Surging with sound of stream

Slogged by monsoon rain

Paints its picture

With each stroke of speech.

But doesn’t know its own face

This melee

Does not recognize its own picture

This hectic rush--

Only speaks relentlessly.

Addressing oneself—

-Move a little, will you?

-Across the river.

-Three hundred and twenty.

-Not sure, you know.

-Same place of last year

-Oh, from tomorrow.

-Who with?

-Where did you sleep?

-This is fresh from our garden.

You may collect a bagful seeds of poetry

By picking up these words.

Life may be climbing rungs of ladder

Stepping on each sentence here

But

Words caught in the competition of

Selling troubles and buying dreams

Even ignore changing colours

Climbing on their faces.

Only keep repeating

Their own dialogues

Never imagined before.

-Let us sit here a while.

-What kind of a man is this!

-Should have a look once.

-Where from?

-Oh, how can that be possible?

-Hot water?

-What did she look like?

-No, not everywhere.

-What time to go?

-Over the log.

Voices lost in pursuits

Of their own interests

Create their own music and return

Carrying each a melody of life.

-There’s absolutely nothing today.

-I guess that’s a little too expensive!

-Oh, so tired!

-Last time also it was like that.

-Forget about the tea.

-In the next house.

Do you think we can read out to the market

An easy poem composed out of itself?

Will it be possible to explain

The pictures to the market

Carved over the sky of its dreams?

Could we enrapture the market

By the symphony

Composed from its cries and mirth?

This market speaking life

When heard from each person

Is now making staggering confused noise

Of all people speaking together.

Pristine river of lives

Is swallowed by the crowd--

Human getting lost into humans.

Man and woman cease to be humans

Once they get lost into crowds.

Is market like people

Who live as humans when they’re alone

But live as great complexity

When they’re in groups?

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Translated from Nepali by Abhi Subedi

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Suman Pokhrel translated into English by Abhi Subedi

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