My Voice

The world’s end can never be reached

by means of traveling through the world,

Yet without reaching the world’s end,

there is no release from suffering.

Therefore, truly, the world-knower, the wise one,

gone to the world’s end, fulfiller of the holy life,

having known the world’s end, at peace,

longs not for this world or another.

 

-Buddha, “The Connected Discourses of the Buddha”

 

 

What could be the world’s end? Is it the end of the world? Or at the end of the world? Or at the end in this world? A number of questions arise in my mind. Most philosophers and poets have talked about life after worldly life, or the absence of life in life itself. Thus, the language of poetry has developed its own culture, the poetic language culture, which does not allow us to use language not sanctioned by our culture. We refine our feelings in keeping with the language of our poetic culture and present them in a manner that, as readers, we should feel ashamed of our own feelings. Maybe poetic language culture has built a few walls around itself. There are a few who have broken these walls and have made an opening to express their crude feelings.

 

In the section “In the Name of Poetry,” we have the poetry of a poet who is a bilingual Tamil-English poet and a chemical engineer by profession; that is why his philosophy is different from poets of other languages. The approach of his poetry is very different and interesting. For example, the poem “Axi OM” – Axi-Om – we break/we form/we rise/we scatter/we stutter/time quakes –/call chiseling fragments/reunite as joy… I am sure readers will find it interesting.

In the section “Poetry at Our Time,” we have three poets from three languages: Nepali, English, and Hindi. These three poets are exploring poetry and ideas. Keshab Sigdal, being an international poet, feels about the globalization of the small town: “My city/Doesn’t have a dream of its own;/Varied dreams/Envisaged by those countless faces/Merge and become a new dream of this city.” Parismita Borah’s poems have dimensions of love, and her poem “Dear Diary” is very emotional: “Oh dear diary/Now I let this plant die/I see no stars aligned/I sit beside the grave of our love/Watching all these memories rot.” Hemant Deolekar writes in Hindi; his poems have been translated by Kamalakar Bhat. Let us see his poem “Harmony”: “White and black,/kept apart, become race;/together, they become music./The harmonium/is an example of companionship./The empty space between the fingers/is meant/to be filled by other fingers.

In the section “Editor’s Choice” – Saurav Saikia (Assamese) – a well-known Assamese poet with eleven volumes of poetry in print, His poems have been published in English and several Indian languages, including Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Oriya, and Kannada. These poems have been translated by Bibekananda Choudhury. In these poems, football is the central theme, which connects to more audiences.

In the section, we present Shelley, the great poet of all time; reading him again reminds us of the base of poetry.

 

I hope readers find some very good poetry in Kritya.

 

Best wishes,

 

Rati Saxena