INTENTIONS OF THE MIND: BANIRA GIRI (11-04-1946+24-05-2021)

THOREAU, PRINCIPALMENTE: BANIRA GIRI, POETA NEPALICANTO DE LIBERTADLibérame...: BANIRA GIRI, POETA NEPALI CANTO DE LIBERTAD Libérame iglesia del sonido de la campana Libérame cielo de la fuerza del rayo Libérame árbol de...

 

 

 

Time, You Are Always The Winner (Samay Timi Sadhaimko Vijeta) 

Snatch me up like an eagle 

swooping down on a chicken, 

wash me away like a flood destroying the fields, 

fling me from the door 

like my daughter carelessly sweeping out dirt. 

 

In infinite wilds I lead 

a solitary life, 

just a naming ceremony, 

set aside, forgotten; 

even in the Ramayana, Lakshman's line 

had first to be drawn 

before Sita could cross it.[2] 

Time, you are always the winner, 

I bent my knee before you 

like Barbarik faced by compulsion,[3] like King Yayati faced by old age,[4] 

I fell prostrate like grandfather Bhishma 

before the arrows from your arms.[5] 

Touch my defeated existence just once 

with your hands of ironwood; 

how numb I am, 

how hard to grasp, how lifeless 

in the presence of your strength and power. 

You spread out forever like the seas, 

I rippled like the foaming waves, 

you blazed up fiercely like a volcano, 

I smouldered, slow as a forest fire. 

You are power, wholly embodied, 

ready to drink even poison, 

we follow—my fellows and I a party, 

we descend on a wheel of birth and death, 

bearing bags full of gifts, 

gifts of alcohol and oxygen, 

blood and cancer, 

tumors and polio. 

My grandson will be born 

with sleeping pills in his eyes, 

his potency already dead, 

needing no vasectomy. 

 

Perhaps he will be born as a war, 

embracing every cripple, 

perhaps he will be born as a void, 

to replace the meaningless babble 

of revolt, lack of faith, and being. 

Perhaps he will even refuse to be born 

from a natural mother's womb; 

Time, you are always the winner:

revealed like a crazy Bhairava,[6] keep burning like the sun,

keep flowing like a river, 

keep rustling like the bamboo leaves. 

Upon your victory, 

I will let loose the calves from the tethering post, 

fling open the doors of grain stores and barns, 

hand over my jewels to my daughter-in-law, 

and lay out green dung, neatly, around the tulsi shrine.[7] 

 

So snatch me up like an eagle 

swooping down on a chicken, 

wash me away like a flood destroying the fields, 

and, like my daughter carelessly sweeping out dirt, 

sweep me from the threshold with a single stroke, 

sweep me from the threshold with a single stroke. 

(no date; from Giri 1974) 

In "Time, You Are Always the Winner" (Samay Timi Sadhaimko Vijeta ), one of Banira's finest poems, references to Pauranic mythology mingle with symbols that are unmistakably modern in their description of the transience of human life. The nature of time and history are common themes in Banira's poems, and her symbolic representations of time are often extremely well conceived. Like the dimensionalist poets, she makes frequent reference to mythological figures but restricts herself to the Hindu myths of her own tradition.