Friends Inimical

By Narayan Kadariya

Friends Inimical

I just felt like asking you a question today,

Foes do you have, if any?

No?

Ill when you are, Oh!

Who wish you were dead, a vehicle you board

Who wish it leap off a cliff, to chant hymns and death invoke?

Deplored I feel here, Oh!

Wait what? You have ‘em?

Then its a pleasure sheer.

Life devoid of foes you see,

Is like the earth sans the sun,

The earth I am

My sun my foes

Reservoir of life, the sun, incessant warmth the earth basks,

Great lengths for the earth the sun goes

Someday overcast, we crave its warmth,

We seek

A day likewise, for me of foes bereft,

Is a day for me to find and make one I am left.

why let slip off this life transient?

It is if with some foes better spent.

Like a south Indian thriller film.

What good are foes who pop up just like that?

What good are foes afar?

Foe that one is the mightiest

Dwelling your home, your village, your acquaintance, your sojourn

A man to prefer enemies at best,

My kins turning up against me, care due my duty rest,

World leaders and nations pay, so have foes to earn,

A payback of my labour painstaking I demand and foes I earn

Enemies do I seem to prefer in earnest.

Poet Manu Manjil and me alike,

An arch enemy I have, ike a garbage he abhors

A flower do I adore him like,

My life entirely on coming of age to spare,

Devoted I am I persevere,

It is foes for me to find everywhere.

A demon inside me, I loiter around

Whom did you come across?

Is up to you and your business sole?

The same day I am purged, a man meek,

My foes dead, the last one of them to seek

Greatest of my friends as they resurrect

(Translation by Samir Kharel)