The Waiting Place
in the sky
the stairs of today’s music
are covered with tomorrow’s leaves
that we must descend
I am here
on the mountain peak
of music
hundreds of years old
the world today
is filled with the scent of
freshly dug-up earth
shaking each coal free
from the womb
For Tomorrow
deep in some sleepy world
having heard the sound of a muffled bullet
the girl is filling the vase with water
deep in some sleepy world
having taken off her socks
to see how her bare feet shine
the girl is sewing a button to her shirt
deep in some sleepy world
in the forest that meets the river
a bridge
made out of windows
descends
and the girl covers it with leaves
to save
for tomorrow
Affairs of the Heart
from those old memories
I want to make a hefty paperweight
that immediately
departs for my beloved’s distant table
where your hands and mine
are entwined in unforgettable softness
like snakes in their den
(I don’t want to hold them down
with this heavy paperweight)
from those memories
I want to build a massive weapon
that rises into the sky to be pulled taut
where
there are glittering necks
in our old intentions
where
if a little time is added
even today
blood
will be seen coursing through their veins
(but I don’t want to cut out my eyes
before giving them
to the cunning darkness)
from those memories
I want to write some guidelines for life
yet immediately
every single word renounces
its place
in the alphabet
and raises its voice in opposition
(from the first blow
I don’t want to minimize
their anger)
then I think
how in all those memories
there’s an ember
I will stoke
to illuminate intentions
and just like that
smoke will rise
from the green forests
(will it be okay
to give the forests
to fire and tears
so quickly?)
nothing comes
from all my thinking
not those old hands
not glistening feverish necks
not a shimmering idea
not a pillar of fire
a bottomless black flood
takes away our things
wrapped in the mud of history
she laps insistently at my back
now she wants to drown
my shoulders and head
at times like this
I wish I could raise
the ground beneath my feet
just so much
so that our shackled necks
heads and shoulders
could transform themselves
in the light of the days to come
and glisten and glimmer
and whatever is seen
through the eyes of memory
must not be made into paperweights
or imaginary weapons
but into words raised in protest
a voice
like a heavy gun
laid in the green grass
from What of the Earth Was Saved
Leeladhar Jagoori
translated from the Hindi by Matt Reeck
Listen to a recording of "The Waiting Place" read in the original Hindi by Dalpat Rajpurohit:
As a whole, this volume was a challenge because it contains poems of many different types: for example, lyrics, protest poems, and several long narrative poems. Each of these varieties of poem has a different intention and vocabulary associated with it. Lyrics can have hermetic qualities that reflect each poet’s imagination and sensibility, while long narrative poems have historical and sociocultural contexts. I’ve tried to capture both as best as possible. In another way, the challenge lay in not forcing the poems to conform to the typologies that I had in mind. Some of the poems are exactly like I wanted them to be: antiauthoritarian statements from 1970s India that can resonate in the United States of 2024.. Others might pass as ecopoetry, which is something that interests me. Yet, by stating that these poems are those types of poems, I risk creating reading expectations in myself that veer toward implicitly contemporary Anglophone standards. Of course, Leeladhar’s poems are conditioned by the world they come from, and from that world’s political, social, and aesthetic histories. And so, there’s always something a little different from what I/you expect. A trace of difference. To my mind, that’s how translation fosters intellectual growth—by offering something that is never wholly reducible to the receiving culture’s expectations. But this is also what I, as a translator, have to make sure to respect: that difference immanent in the poems themselves.
Leeladhar Jagoori (b. 1940) is one of the leading Hindi poets in India. For his poetry, he has won the top literary and cultural awards in India, including the Sahitya Akademi Hindi Prize (1997); the Padma Shri, a lifetime achievement award (2004); and the KK Birla Foundation’s Vyas Samman (2018), which honors excellence in the arts. He lives in Dehradun, Uttarakhand.
Matt Reeck is a Guggenheim Fellow in translation. His translation What of the Earth Was Saved from the Hindi of Leeladhar Jagoori is forthcoming from World Poetry Books (2024). He lives in Brooklyn with his family.
