Sarfaraz Alam

Translation: Dr.Anuradha Banerjee

New City

I asked
When’ll we meet again?
You said –
Tomorrow.

I asked
Where’ll we meet?
You said –
On the map.

Then I asked
Where on the map?
You said –
In a new city.

In the map of world
I started sketching
A new city.

Journey

On the map of the world
Holding each other’s hands
After a memorable journey
Halting at an unknown turn
We look into each other’s eyes for a long time
And I see in your eyes a golden path
Now the journey ahead you continue with the help of the map drawn in my eyes
And I with the help of the map created in your eyes
Now both of us
Have become travellers of the most beautiful province
I am traversing with your eyes
You are traversing with mine..

Mangu Ram

During last year’s draught
Leaving his own village
Manguram went to some big city
In search of a livelihood
Though this year it has rained profusely in the village
Manguram hasn’t come back to his village
Where is Manguram these days?
No villager has any clue about his whereabouts

Will the district cartographer
In his drawings be able to point out
Where is Manguram right now
And how is he?

Dark Days

On the map of dark days
Why are the mountains of sorrow not seen?

On the map of the dark days
Why don’t the rivers of sorrow flow?

On the map of the dark days
Why are the spots of blood pale?

On the map of the dark days
Why the weapons of the tyrant
are kept hidden?

From the map of the dark days
Who has deleted the mountains of sorrow?

From the map of dark days
Who has washed off the spots of blood?

From the map of the dark days
Who has hidden away the weapons of torture?

Who has drawn the maps of dark days?

The State of My Heart

Where am I?
And where is my heart?

Each cartographer of the world
Can detect my physical presence
On the map of the world

But it’s you alone
Who can tell
Where is my heart right now.

Sarfaraz Alam is a Professor in the Department of Geography at the Institute of Science, Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi.   Alongside his teaching and research contributions, Dr. Alam writes poetry in Hindustani, where his disciplinary engagement with geography finds a profound creative expression. His debut collection Naqshanama (2023) exemplifies this intersection: it reimagines the map—not merely as a scientific or technical tool, but as a site of power, division, and human consequence. His second collection, Naqshakashi (2026), continues this exploration, further expanding his poetic engagement with space, separation, attachment and emotions. Through both his academic and creative work, Dr. Alam articulates a compelling vision of geography as a discipline that bears witness to human existence—one that can unite rather than divide. This vision aligns with his broader aspiration for a borderless South Asia, reflecting both his academic commitments and poetic imagination.

Dr.Anuradha Banerjee –Creative writer (Plays and Poetry) ,Translator,Works in 5 languages: Bangla,English,Hindi,Sanskrit, Urdu. Name of imp translations-Sanskrit mahakavya Rakshat Gangam translated into English,Tao translated from English into Hindi,Tagore’s 5 plays and 110 poems (Bangla) translated into Hindi,Divya Dwarika from Hindi into English and many more works. She has two collections of poetry and one collection of plays. She got award from -Awards from ,Uttar Pradesh Hindi Sansthan, Bihar Hindi Sahitya Sammelan , Baheti Panchayat Trust Bikaner Rajasthan, anchanani Devi Trust Uttarakhand, Spoke on Gandhi in Turin, Italy invited as poet to  Mauritius

Paul Mirabile

Art is Blue

Is Art not Blue ?
Colour of the sky, the sea, the misty mountain view ?
Whose soft, mellow tones never the eyes shall rue
The azure mornings and indigo nights
The pallid mournings and melancholic plights.

How many really knew
Of the actor’s prompted cue,
Of the painter’s cast hue,
Of the musician’s symphonic debut,
Of the writer’s plotting brew ?
They who foster either a wizened gloom
Or awaken merriment, a blissful bloom ?

For Art is really Blue.
Tinged with the emotion of a but a few
Saddened plots, dreary dirges, dull lieus.
Art elevates the spirits and mind, fashions life anew.

Twilight

Behold the fiery blaze of Twilight
The buff Rim sinking slow into Eventide ;
Over sienna burnt planes and fields of rye,
Over fossilised forests, dales and mountain side.

The Gloaming and the Mirk : Twilight !
Accursed Figures drift between the Light,
Here a bark, there a howl, ô equivocal sight
Bewitching to the sleepless sleeper’s unversed eye.

Between both lights of Twilight
The lonely beholder partakes of primeval scenes,
Crepuscular, dusky, a myriad gloamy flights
Winebibbing him thus with vintage sweetness of oncoming Dreams …

Night

The deep Darkness of Night
And the Silence that therein dwells
Offer the sleepless sleeper a welcome plight
To enrich his earthly Hells.

The starred Silence of Night
Over which he kept starry vigil,
Drew him ever upwards towards heroic height
Into the Voice of a droning Recital.

The errant Wind of Night
That stirs neither leaf nor bough,
Sweeps by the sleepless sleeper’s sight
As he glimpses the russet rustle of the Dawn’s brow …

Dawn

Ah ! The pastel sfumato of Dawn
Rose dancing before the eyes of him
Who had kept awake till morn
To contemplate Her hempen, yellow, rising Rim.

The gay abandon of the dancing Dawn
Set astir his weary eyelids wide
To the luminous kaleidoscope of morn,
To the merriment of Her looming pride.

Joyous Disc of rosy Dawn
Surging high from Her darkened slumber.
The vigil held out his arms to Her, the Fawn,
And in one leap tore his laughing sides a asunder …

Paul Mirabile has travelled forty-nine years through Africa, Europe and Asia teaching History, languages and literature whilst studying the cultures and the languages of the countries where he taught, fashioning what has become the Mediaeval Eurasian Koinê, exposed in nine books and dozens of articles. He has published books, articles, essays, short stories, travel narratives and several poems in over twenty-five academic journals or more popular magazines and newspapers, writing in French, English or Spanish.

Shwetank Singh ( Hindi) 

Translated from Hindi by Kamalakar Bhat

Autumn

Every day
a few leaves are
shed.
There are brief spells of fall.
It is not as if
autumn is suddenly upon us.
**

The Sun and the Lantern
The sun of her world
was the soot-stained lantern
hanging in the corner of the house—
a lantern she loved
more than the sun itself.
In its flame
she learned to write
a few letters of freedom—
a… z… a… d… i…
she learned to draw
pictures of fluttering wings,
she learned to speak
a few necessary notes of dissent.
Seeing its soot,
she came to know
that even black stains
can be luminous.
**

Women Who Never Went anywhere after Marriage

There were many women
who, after marriage,
never stepped outside the house—
nowhere at all.
City, train, bridge, market,
school, station, hospital—
for them these were words
merely heard,
not things
ever seen by the eyes.

Except for one or two men,
“man” to them
was like a red signal
before which they drew the veil
down to their necks.

The circumference of their world
was scarcely as wide
as a black pan.

Their hunger
ended once everyone else had eaten.
From their eyes
tears never flowed—
instead, sparks flew
like embers from the hearth.

To keep the house running, to save it,
they were pressed between bricks
and turned into
smoke-coloured cement.

Strange—
for them the house
was the entire universe.
The evil spirits of the house
were their superhumans.

They did not wish to go anywhere
or arrive anywhere,
did not wish to see beyond the walls.
Their sorrows had become their joys.

Who knows
what herb society possessed—
what scent it made them inhale—
that set them running through
kitchen, courtyard, threshold,
until they were turned
into a stick that submitted to the housework.

**

The Weight of Girls’ Schoolbag

The weight
of a girl’s schoolbag
is much greater than
that of a boy.
When girls set out
to school
apart from books and notebooks
their bags also carry
the weight of
prejudicial homely responsibilities.
The chains
that our society has forged
exclusively for girls
do not allow their feet
to feel unburdened
even outside homes.
I consider
every forward step taken by a girl
as equal to a complete revolution of the earth.

**

The Man Writing a Poem

The man writing a poem
tries constantly to
bring to our attention
the fact that
the man with empty hands
is as much a man
as the one with hands
filled with currency notes.

The man writing a poem
tries every moment
to say that
the emptiness of a man’s hands
cannot take away
his right to be a man.

Reading the lines
on the empty hands,
he tries to tell us
that they bespeak the language of
non-difference.

**

Shwetank Kumar Singh is a contemporary Hindi poet based in Ballia, Uttar Pradesh, where he is currently engaged in teaching. His poetry is marked by a deep ethical and emotional engagement with the lives of women, farmers, labourers, and rural communities, and is widely recognised for its voice of resistance and social commitment.
His poems have appeared in several prestigious journals and literary magazines in India and abroad, and have been translated into multiple languages including Kannada, English, Gujarati, Odia, Nepali, and Bhojpuri. A widely read and performed poet, Singh has presented his work at numerous literary forums across the country, and his poems have been rendered by noted artists and actors.
He is the recipient of several honours, including the Hindi Sevi Samman, Mishra Samman, Maa Veenapani Samman, Vageshwari Sahitya Samman, Neeraj Shabd Shilpi Samman, Abhijana Samman, Sumitranandan Pant Smriti Samman, Srijan Sadhak Samman, Shikshak Ratna, and the Kamalakar Mishra Smriti Samman, among others.

Kamalakar Bhat is an award-winning Kannada poet, a bilingual writer and translator. He has published four collections of poems, six collections of translated verse, and has edited four books. He writes in both academic and popular media on books, poetry and translations. His most recent work is a translation of the essays of Kirtinath Kurtkoti, titled “Courtesy of Criticism” published by Penguin Random House India. He teaches English Literature at Ahmednagar College, Maharashtra, India.