Showing posts with label gujarati poem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gujarati poem. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Old translation of Gujarati poem

I had published a number of translations of Gujarati poets in Indian Literature, a journal that is published by the Sahitya Akademi [The National Academy of Letters, India] in 1997, in an issue numbered 181.

One such poet is Labhshankar Thakar who is known as a modernist poet in Gujarati. The translation can be seen in the printed copy of the journal but here it has already been reproduced on Muse India, which is an online literary journal, so, I am sure there are no copyright issues. Here is the poem:

Sunlight

In the morning dew sunlight
melts.
Melts, melts a mountain of shadows.
And in tears
the green thorn thistle
drowning floating
floating drowning
colliding whirling comes
near the wild thorn thistle.
On the thorn thistle,
a sandgrouse sits sandgrouse sits sandgrouse sits
its wing trembles trembles trembles.
In the grandfather's eyes, light dims.
In the dim dim dawn dawn
light light
oho I hear again oho I hear from a distance
in the thak .... thak .... thak .... thak .... sounds
I become a flower and blossom
blossom
become a tree and swing
swing
become an ocean and drown
drown
become a mountain and jump
jump
become the sky and shatter
shatter becoming sunlight
becoming sunlight scatter
I touch the deep of the morning's dew-ocean.
My crunched crunched edge goes on melting.
Melts melts a mountain of shadows!
Hope you enjoyed it!


This blog is about a personal history but also about a professional life. It is about an English professor but also about a professional translator. It is in fact about a life well-lived and how to live a life pretty well.

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