Godown Poem by Pradip Saikia

My prehistoric godown
Is filled with
Innumerable sculptures

Uncountable geometric people

A galloping stallion
With a flame in its mouth
Around the bank of a plane circle

Bones of sailors in the glittering sand
Wrecked ships - graph of moonlight
Sleeping together

A bird
Its wings chopped off
The burning form of hunger

Rectangular
Erect
Quadrangle
Triangle

Three stone animals
Blind deaf dumb

Devi Sakambhari in Abhay Mudra
Fight until death between two sketches


Under a blood stained violin
A hunched statue studying history

Insane collage of a poet
In tattered clothes

An abstract scream
Vaporous
Cold
Flattened
Flaming

Race of hooves of a herd of wild horses

The angry shepherd
With a flock of sheep

A town
Burnt to ashes

Shadow of an owl flying away
Etc.

I am
In this museum
Cared and maintained by me

Shall remain as the guard of eternity
At my soul's insistence

# Translated from Assamese to English by: Bibekananda Chowdhury