The anthology includes two Indian poets : one is Rabindranath Tagore (with whose poem the anthology begins) and the other Indian poet is Sadanand Rege.
To browse through the book click here.
Sadanand Rege's poem 'Old Leaves From The Chinese Earth' (translated by Dilip Chitre) is a part of this anthology.
The poem follows below --
Old Leaves From The Chinese Earth
(I bought a Chinese book at a second-hand book shop. I got a man who spoke Japanese to explain it to me. All that I could make of it is what follows.)
I am Chiang Liang.
Once I was crossing the bridge,
And an old man was sitting there.
And as soon as he saw me,
He took off one of his shoes
And threw it deliberately into the river,
And said to me:
My good fellow,
My shoe has fallen into the river,
Please fish it out for me.
I was furious.
But i curbed my temper
And jumped into the water.
As soon as I had come up with the shoe,
He threw the other into the river.
‘Oh, there goes the other one too.’
I dived into the water again
And came back with the second shoe,
When he threw the first one back into the river.
I was furious. He said:
Meet me here again after thirteen years.
After thirteen years
There was no one on the bridge.
Only the sun blared down on it,
The size of a tiger’s jaw.
I waited a long time for the old man.
Then I came down and looked into the water:
There was my own face behind the sun,
There was nobody on the bridge except the sun.
But someone spoke out of my bones:
One shoe is life, the other is death.
I recognized the voice.
***
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