Poems From Northeast: My Invented Land And An Impression of Being Alive

My Invented Land

My native soil was created from tiny sparks
that clung to grandmother’s earthen pot
which conjured savoury dishes
I’ve been looking for
all my life in vain.

My homeland has no boundaries.
At cockcrow one day it found itself
inside a country to its west,
(on rainy days it dreams looking East
when its seditionists fight to liberate it from truth.)

My people have disinterred their alphabet,
burnt down decrepit libraries
in a last puff of nationalism
even as a hairstyle of native women
have been allowed to become extinct.

My native place has not been christened yet
my homeland, a travelogue without end,
a plate that will always be greedy
(but got rice mixed with stones)

My home has young people
who found their dreams in a white substance
and the old that transplanted their eyes,
it has leaders who have disappeared
into their caricatures.

My home is a gun
pressed against both temples
a knock on a night that has not ended
a torch lit long after the theft
a sonnet about body counts
undoubtedly raped
definitely abandoned
in a tryst with destiny.

—Translated from Manipuri by the poet

Robin S Ngangom, Manipur

(Robin S Ngangom is a bilingual poet and translator who writes in English and Manipuri. He has co-edited two significant anthologies of poetry from Northeast India. His latest book, My Invented Land, appeared in 2023)

An Impression of Being Alive

All day we have watched the street shift
and careen, shed skin, refill, crest and yaw,
corrected our taste for oranges
packed by other hands from other places, bought
tokens of summer and the coming happiness—
we paused at the Korean romances: A Tale of a Prince,

Over Rainbow, Tree of Heaven. And the corporate type
who went mad for a girl.
No prince arrived with a piece of fax.
You said Plainly, it’s all money and for-
nication, just like everywhere else. We smiled
at the notion of moon bases and hummed a tune
from the movie we figured
we were still living in.

All day the sun kept tangling and stumbling
among bright open windows while the shopgirls cheered on,
and the pavement singers, and those women
fingering black laces in Foreign Lane
and we lived in and out of restaurants, smoking nonstop,

plate after plate of consommé 
not thinking or speaking, our nerves
shattered by the urge to depart. All day
we have waited and waited
under heaven’s wide and lovely tree
for princes, advisors,
even some flannel postman to come and say
that the ship’s sailed, the bus
has left, all families look for us.
Have we said too much? Or not enough–

And here we are, the day gone
to its usual brilliant bedtime, the astronauts gone, the rain
now cadencing in our heads. The restaurant must close.
We have learned nothing. You wisely add: Really,
there was nothing to learn.

Mona Zote, Mizoram

(Mona Zote is a poet living in Aizawl. Her poetry has appeared in various journals, including the Cordite Poetry Review, Indian Literature, IQ Magazine, India International Centre Quarterly, Carapace, Sangam House as well as in anthologies such as Dancing Earth: An Anthology of Poetry from North-East India, the Oxford Anthology of Writings from North-East India, and The Borderlands of Asia: Culture, Place, Poetry)