Working all day, dreaming at night - Jit Narain

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