Working all day, dreaming at night –
Aja’s appearance is something like mine.
My ship was not called Lalla Rookh
and my country’s name became Holland, meneer.
I flew KLM, I left Surinam.
When the memory of you arose,
I went in search of history.
The sap of this story is not sacred nectar,
the feeling it gives holds my mind in its grip.
Why he left India, that I can fathom;
that India never left him, is the burden I bear.
Jit Narain (born 1948) Suriname
Translated by Paul Vincent
Source: Poetry International
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