Shirish Mourya​

Rivers Remember Forever
 
Everybody is asking How hard will it rain
everybody is saying Nobody knows
 
rain is just like rain
but people do not remain people
living does not resemble living
soaking is not like soaking
 
brimming with muddy water 
rivers flow like flowing
they remember the long lost paths 
of their flow like remembering
they return like returning
but their eyes are weak
lifting the trunks of the waves from afar 
they smell the old paths
and run like elephants
 
rain turns rivers
into a lost herd of elephants
trumpeting wildly
wanting to converge
at some old spot
where the bones of their ancestors
dried in the sun for years
 
the ancestors of rivers are like ancestors
it is the land of ancestors where 
new-fangled people have settled
new buildings have risen
the soil dug up the trees cut the rocks broken
the mountains bundle them into a bag of water
to carry them back there
 
paths must be returned
under this governance of rain
to people who did not remain people
the land must be given up
whoever refuses to yield
by mistake or under complacence
is done for
 
rivers are not killers
it is the desires of people
to snatch everything
that are murderous
rain is simply like rain
I live in the midst of this rain
in the mountains
and get soaked like getting soaked
my skin does not melt my bones do not collapse
I appear as stark as some brown strong rock
its year-long stains wash away like washing away

the rivers emerging from my mountains
and spreading life to the far-off ocean
do not ask for much
 
except that 
people remain people
living resemble living
and there be some path
in the memory of rivers like memory itself
 
settlements upon the bones of 
ancestral streams cannot endure
but rivers remember forever

Translated from the Hindi by Sarabjeet Garcha

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