Everything is There

Nothing is lost that I call mine—
Neither love, nor sadness,
Nor the flight tickets.

Therefore one has to reach
At all those places, where
A few known and dead
Repeatedly, and when
Everyone leaves when
We are surprised.
They move away
To an old theater, in which
Are set the handloom stalls.
I no longer follow them.

Some twenty or thirty miles away,
At some place or the other,
There is the sea, which is
Mercury during the day,
And is the ink in the evening,
Spilts on the sandy shore.

When I return to my hotel
In the night, I see
A shattered temple talks to
Another temple.

On the roadside,
Inside an old glass,
The moon had fallen.

When I begin my day,
Everything is there—
The keys to the house,
The dried up betel leaves,
The drops of the medicine
In the eye,
What Mallika had given
The scar of the chest.

Everything is there,
Nothing is lost

By Devdas Chhotray (Translated from Odia by Bibhu Padhi and Minakshi Rath)