Hadaa Sendoo ( poet from Mangol)
Oh, a、e、i、o、u、ò、ù
You’re the blue sky, I am the cloud
You’re the green grass, I am the wind
Oh, a、e、i、o、u、ò、ù
You’re the blue smoke, pathway
You’re the homeland
Note: * In Mongolian, there are 7 vowels (phonemes) and all vowels can be long or short. The length of vowels differentiates meaning. And long vowels can only appear in the first syllable of a word.
I close my eyes
I still cannot fall asleep
I open my eyes
I want peace, but I am at a loss
The Ruin,
like a dry sea.
The garnet-red clouds
of Kublai Khan.
Still
your body being my body
the blue-green of tiles
the breeze milky
with blue smoke
evoke the landscape of us.
Reasons for Tears from Heaven
When the desert disappears
We humans become a desert
When loaches have disappeared
We can’t be rivers
When the white snow disappears
Winter will die out in our lives
When nomads disappear
I call to the past, to Sangiindalai*
When Mandela was gone
A lighthouse of peace was extinguished
On the ocean of nights
When a bird disappears
The city loses a musical note
When the earth disappears
Who could get back, holding the ashes of parents?
Reasons for tears from Heaven
*Sangiindalai, also Sangendalai, where Hadaa spent his childhood time on the shilingol grassland, today’s Inner Mongolia.
Hadaa Sendoo 
(b.1961) is recognized as a great poet of the 21th century. Some of his works include Melody of Rocks (in Mongolian 1996), Steppe (in Mongolian 2005), Come Back to Earth (in English 2011), Endless Road (in Mongolian 2011), Sweet Smell of Grass (in Persian 2016), Aurora (in Kurdish 2017), Mongolian Long Song (in Georgian 2017), When I die, I will dream (in Mongolian- German bilingual 2017), Mongolian Blue Spots (in Dutch,2017), A Corner of the Earth (in Norwegian 2018), Peace, Broken Heart (in Russian 2018), Sich zuhause fühlen (in German 2018). His third German collection of poems has published in Germany in 2019. Hadaa Sendoo has won awards for poetry in North America, Africa, Arabian countries, Asia and Europe. He was awarded the highest Prize by the Mongolian Writers’ Union. His poetry works have been translated more than 40 languages. Some of his new poems, have appeared in the KRITYA Poetry Journal. In 2006, he founded groundbreaking World Poetry Almanac which he continues to edit. He lives in the Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia.
Oumar Farouk Sesay
THERE WAS AN EDEN
There was once a river called Pampana
It was a pristine brook sprouting from Lake Sonfon
flowing to the Taia and Moa Rivers, bringing succor
and sustenance to the people living along its trail
At its puberty, the Pampana River was our Nile
teeming with life and culture to enthrall minds
it ran like blood in the estuaries of the land
connecting the limbs of the country
In our youth, we swam and drank its water
It was so refreshing, like Zamzam from
Masjid al-Haram
The river was our gift from a benevolent God
I swear to God, it was nothing like this pus, bleeding, sore
emitting putrid smell
now meandering through the land like a cancerous
artery to poison downstream
There was also a Rokel river running its course
from the North to the West to quench the thirst
of the Atlantic Ocean
At its prime, it filled our hearts with joy and flowed
In our poems and songs as a metaphor for life
I swear by the thunder of Kurumaseba
in the scorching Month of Bankaylay
The Rokel River then was nothing like
this mutilated remains trickling like a drainage
to the ocean
The Sewa River flowed from East to the south
Carrying in its belly the vault of Zulkharanin
So, men came from afar to gouge its womb
And remove the gold and diamonds
I swear to the hills of Njaima Nemekoro
The majestic sewa of my childhood was nothing like
this sewer of sewage sluggishly flowing across the land
May the wrath of the gods of Bintumani Hills strike
me dead If I lied about the Kangari Hills,
the Gola Forest and the green hill of the Bintumani range
About the primates of Outamba Kilimi sanctuary
The birds of Lake Sonfon and its biodiversity
It was nothing like this grassland of scurrying squirrels
tweeting sparrows and hopping grasshoppers
There was a Tiwai island, a home of birds, primates and reptiles
It was the spot where Noah’s ark anchored after the flood
I swear to Ngewoh that it was nothing like
The scorched desert baying for rain
These thirsty streams you see were once home.
To the pygmy hippos that swam freely to the amazement of Tourist
This barren patch was once a tropical forest, a home
to elephants, monkeys, and antelopes
this place was a portion of heaven tossed to us gratis
But we ate the apple, slashed the tree, and stuck a middle
finger at nature
well, nature struck back, and we are left with this carnage
Yes! there was indeed an Eden called Sierra Leone
before beasts of a lesser god sold it piecemeal for crumbs.
BEFORE YOU DIE ON YOUR KNEES
I came to gather your poems
the finished and the fractured,
your similes, both served and severed,
your metaphors, twisted and torn,
your pain, inherited and inflicted.
I came to retrieve your fears
the real and the whispered,
buried deep in your marrow,
encoded in the line of your lineage.
The fears of those whose ancestors
bound yours in chains,
whose smiles mask a ,
hunger for a past of shackles.
I came to reclaim your story
twisted, mangled, censored.
To trace the hidden scars
in the chapters they erased,
to expose the fault lines
before the earth splits beneath you again.
I came for the ache gnawing at your bones,
for the laughter barely escaping your lips,
for the sorrow that shadows your tomorrow,
and the muted hues between your rainbows.
I came to cradle your anguish,
to bottle your tears and make them
an elixir for truth and healing.
I came to turn your anecdote into an antidote.
I came to sift through your dreams,
scattered at Bormeh minefield
to salvage them before they decay,
before they spoil the air,
with a stench so thick, it strangles
the very breath of this realm.
I came to harness your anger,
to forge it into a sword,
sharpened to strike
at the enemies of progress.
I came to sift your hopes from the rubble,
to stitch the shattered shards of your soul,
to make you whole again
to lift you up
so you can stand and fight for justice,
and stop your soul from kneeling
to those mortgaging this realm.
I came with a wounded nib
to weave your rainbows
before the skies turn to ash,
before the world is draped in grey again.
Before you die on your knees
I came to give you a voice
So you can read with renewed vigour
Claude McKay’s immortal lines:
“If we must die, let it not be like hogs,
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.”
Fractured Canvas
In my mindscape, debris lies strewn,
Of ideas, both fresh and long-forgotten,
Where love, joy, and despair commune.
I tread softly around the wreckage,
Seeking words to mend the fray,
To quell the shattered land’s rampage.
Yet, like a drunkard, I falter,
Stumbling amidst the chaos,
Rising again, but with shoulders hunched.
Yet, what solace can I offer this Kush-ed youth?
Nothing but echoes of their fathers’ words,
And the shattering wails of their mother’s pain.
So, I retreat to a distant realm within,
Contemplating dreams now fractured,
An anthem of freedom now sedated
I cry a soul-shattering cry,
So that even the ashes from the bones
They smoked could hear me.
How did a land once hopeful and pristine,
Become a canvas deeply fractured in smoke?
IT DID NOT GET TO ME
It is not the nape-breaking breaches that get to me
Neither the ditch-dotted landscape
Nor the filth-belching beaches,
Nor the voices pitching breaches
to those the breaches left in the ditches,
Nor the bald mountains shaved by bland minds,
Not even the dead dog decomposing at the marketplace
Next to the vendor of condiments, I saw that day,
Nor the Sodomy of the will of the people in full glare
in the village square.
None of that gets to me.
What got to me was the cadence of concurrence:
The depth of the ditches of decadence,
The chorus of chaos and arrogance of ignorance,
The scourge of despair contending with the plague,
The deluge of delusion drowning minds,
The sterile uniformity and its sibling dance;
Of one feeble step forward and two steps backward,
The leftover minds of a bleak past moulding today’s minds,
The dearth of grit to blink discontent against contempt,
The look of surrender propped on shoulders,
The stumped spirit limping on prosthesis with a thud
like a death match
the decapitated hope hooping like Wan foot jumpy of myth
The choice of the much-traveled path to a future
Looking every inch like a scarred past
Then, that got to the core of my being
As if a battered spear is wedged in my heart
And those dancers feigning to justify the insult
To our decency surely danced on my nerves that day
Ripping the veil of my serenity, yes, it got to me really bad
So badly that I yearned to yank that which made them desecrate
this space with their dances, breaches, ditches, pitches, and pits.
Madani
You would not know this land anymore,
the land whose ears caught your first cry,
whose winds sang your lullabies and cradled
the fragile footprint of your first breath.
This land that tasted your first blood,
ate your foreskin, drank your sweat,
and buried your cord beneath the thombi tree.
She embraced your bare feet,
fed your hungry soul,
grew the reed for the Karamoko’s hand,
sharpened to Kathenke.
This land nurtured the shrubs
boiled to Ruba by the Karanday,
and grew the tree the carver shaped into a slate—
so you could learn, as commanded in Sura Ikra,
the sacred art of reading.
This land taught you of here and the hereafter,
and now she holds your tomb in her womb,
until the day when the sun will collapse into itself,
the stars will fade, mountains will tremble and scatter,
the beasts will be gathered, oceans will burn,
souls will be paired, and the heavens will be torn open.
But you would not know this land anymore
her cheek is scarred, her thighs scabbed,
her braids crawling with lice.
She is carved, contorted, like a broken map of forgotten times.
Madani, if you returned, you would not know her.
Only the distant call of the Muezzin,
echoing from the minaret where you once stood,
would call you back.
Maybe the fading pulse of the Sambore,
carried faintly beyond the meadows,
would whisper memories,
but even that is fading now.
You would not know this land, Madani.
This land is changed.
Oumar Farouk Sesay
, a versatile creative talent, has significantly contributed to theatre, journalism, and literature. Beginning as a resident playwright at Bai Bureh Theatre in the vibrant 1980s, his plays earned him acclaim at City Hall. Transitioning to journalism, his eloquent voice resonated in local and international newspapers. As a poet, he's featured in anthologies and published several collections, some translated into Spanish and German. His novel " Landscape of Memories & quot; garnered attention, republished in 2023. Beyond writing, Sesay's intellectual pursuits led him to fellowships at prestigious institutions like the University of Birmingham. He now serves as President of PEN Sierra Leone, advocating for literature and freedom of expression.
Tanmay Mondal ( Bengali/ Bangla)
Search
(Translated by Owshnik Ghosh)
There is an infinite search.
Inside everyone.
I’m searching too…
Several times have thought
this sleeping city will wake up soon,
a milky-white light will come out
from the coffin…
I am in search,
like a newly married girl
Searches for her father in her beloved,
like a swan finds it’s leaving
from the mud.
Thirty Durga Pujas, Christmases,
and Eid-ul-fitters have passed
still, I am searching
a hand to trust
a trustworthy heart…
(Translated by Owshnik Ghosh)
Three of us are sitting in the same room,
yet not speaking to each other.
Each of our sights has found its light,
caged in the box.
In the subconscious of the light
a virtual crow is waiting at the door
of an unknown black hole.
Clean ashes of rotten times lie in its wings.
Actually, we all are in search of a grain
in the long virtual queue
that search has left us lonelier.
Tanmay Mandal Although a student of physics, he has a passion for literature.
Changed profession several times in life. Currently doing journalism. Writing started from childhood. Born on November 23, 1993 in Nazat Village, North 24 Parganas, West Bengal. He spent his childhood in his aunt’s house in Ashoknagar. Now living in Kolkata. From 2013, he took charge of editing the magazine ‘Nabankur’.
Poetry Books: Mrityuke Khola Chithi (2016), Palak Jeevan (2019), Shitaghume 12 Din (2019), Pulsirat Periye Parijat Ban (2022).
Story Book: Bode (2024).
Edited Books:
Epar Bangla Opar Bangla (Collection of stories form West Bengal & Bangladesh) (2013),
Bhasar Kobita Sankalan (Poetry collection on mother tongue) (2015).
Awards: Pather Alap Half Decade Best 5 Award (2017), Nitish Dutta Memorial Award (2017), Srijan Award (2018) etc.
