MOSS

My feet slipped in the yard,  
too much of moss there.  

So what if I fell down ?  
Ashamed ?  
What should I be ashamed of ?  
It's natural to fall.And there is glory  
in getting up.  
Some are smiling as if their feet  
haven't slipped ever  
on this moss.  

Scrub you may hard and often,  
it grows again, this moss :  
to grow is its nature,  
and nothing can make it vanish.  
Of course, I should have been careful  
while walking down the yard.  
That would have spared me  
such a big fall.  
My hands and feet are injured.  

In the unhurt body  
this injury is not much.  
Soon it will heal, the ache  
may last till tomorrow.  
The scar will remain for sometime,and  
gradually it will merge into my skin.  

After my fall, I hope you will be cautious  
as you walk from this side to that,  
you've to move very slowly, you know,  
pressing your feet to the ground.  
And if you slip even after that  
I must say you didn't move with caution,  
only faked to do so.  

Mark these three words : moss, fall and caution;  
inevitably linked they are.  
If you take them together and infer a meaning,  
it's of some use, otherwise  
you will continue to slip-and-fall, again and again,  
and take in its pain.  
  

Translation :
Rabindra K Swain 

THE POET

Someone makes me write with my hand in his,  
His breath in my experience,  
his breathing warm in my ears.  
Yet do I know what gets written on this paper?  
Intoxicated as I am then by that ecstatic closeness,  
I live on in my own amazement.  

But realization makes me aware then  
That he isn't there; where then is the delight  
of his touch ?  
Merely he has written a poem and left it behind,  
A poem resembling a poem,  
For me to be the poet of the poem.  
  

Translation :
Jayanta Mahapatra