Poems from His Earth: Hiren Bhattacharyya’s Poetry of Nature

Possibly the most popular name in Assamese poetry, Hiren Bhattacharyya’s poetry brings up the lush imagery of nature: paddy fields, waves of green, ripples in the air and gushing rains. He had a long career as a writer and editor of many periodicals in which his poems were much awaited.

The internet tells us that he added the word shosyoghran, an evocative word for the smell of harvest, to the Assamese dictionary. Reading his beautiful words, even if translated, shows how apt this happening was.

October Landscape

I

It’s over –

The orgiastic frenzy of a brutal sky.

In the restive fields now ripple

Wave after green wave.

II

The white of the kohua

Breaks the lull of an inky sky.

An autumn sky whispers –

There’s a season for every poem.

III

In every crease of descending light

A revelation.

With every emotion

Awakens a word

His imagery of nature is soothing in its invocation of colours and smells, and the emotions and associations with them. However, a poem that particularly touched us was one that talks of words in the hands of a young poet. Keeping the imagery of nature and farming intact, he fuses this beautifully with his love for words.

These My Words

(For the young poet)

In these my words that have caressed

The orchards of my dream

Is the grace of a life style,

The intimate warmth of time.

I have no inventions of my own.

I am like a farmer,

I roll words on my tongue;

To see how each one tastes;

Hold them in my palms to see how warm.

I know words are the lusty offsprings of man’s noble creation;

A mere poet am I

In these words that I have relayed

From other shoulders

Is man’s cruel experience,

And the maulings of history

Translated from Assamese into English by Pradip Acharya

You can read more of his poetry here and learn more about his life here.