Red Hill

(This is my first poem that I had translated from the original English to Nepali. Otherwise, I originally write in English.)

From beyond the distant Pine Hills
The sun would wake up the spring and the spout
And Bhunti’s mother with a filled water pot
Would slip in the green, slimy quadrangle –

Water would flow one way, the pot would have scattered in chips.
Bhunti would run out with another pot of her size,
Pudke would be peeping from behind the henequen fences;
And while returning, limbs sucked by leeches
Would disappear behind Red Hill –
Red earth, red poinsettia, red Red Hill.
Cheeks reddened by warm water
And peach flowers in white blossoms
Would keep on following for a long, long time.

Rubbing zanthozylum leaves while descending
down to the valley with cowboys,
We would search for crabs along the streams
by the terraced paddy – fields
To hang them down the eaves of the barn
And keep away witches.
Bhunti would go to the woods
To collect brambles in the afternoon,
Blowing sarcococca leaves and hopping her way;
Pudke would be waiting under the arbour.

The childhood of that Red Hill,
Ripe red bay-berry, red, red rhododendron,
And pockets reddened with barberry
Is flown away somewhere by silk-cotton feathers;
Bhunti disappeared somewhere,
And the foot-prints skidding on those slippery
slopes disappeared, too.
Now the ripe golden raspberry bushes
And the millet-cakes of the watermill owner
Might have forgotten the face;
Sleeves after sleeves have torn and tattered,
Hairs have turned grey and white.




(11 November 2003)