Personal Feelings Of Love And Loss

In the fine art of translation, a poem is also born anew. It transcends language and geography and takes its soul with it, enabling the new tongue to speak for itself. ‘Pale Shadows at Dusk,’ a collection of twenty-five poems by the accomplished Nepali poet Bishwa Sigdel, is evidence to this transformational power, translated into English by Stormy Hazarika and into German by Svenja Hermessen. 

Though a German edition shows an international appeal, this review will engage with the nuances of Hazarika's masterful English translation. The poems beautifully mix personal feelings of love and loss with bigger ideas about society and life.

Bishwa Sigdel, a native of Banepa, believes that with good literature we can shape a better world. Influenced by masters like Marquez and Neruda, his work reflects a deep engagement with both the subtle interiorities of the human heart and the stark realities of the world outside. His poetry explores both inner feelings and the outer world, introducing a voice that is both gentle and firm.

"Pale Shadows at Dusk," the collection’s first poem, sets these central motifs: intimacy, nature binding itself with loss. Here the speaker gathers in the “earthy fragrance” of a lover, “hungrily seeking your shore.” The imagery is tactile and firmly connected to the world of nature. Words “nestle in the lap of night, like dark cedars,” and lovers turn into “Uncaring of society / Oblivious to the world / Drinking each other’s soul.” However, this intimacy is haunted by an unrequited desire, neatly summarized in the poignant repetition of the line: “the wine flagon…unopened." This conflict between profound attachment and unrequited longing vibrates through a great deal of poems, leaving a bittersweet echo.

One of the collection's greatest strengths is Sigdel's command over nature as a metaphorical landscape. It is an active participant, a mirror to the soul. In "Fresh Earth," love for an aging partner is celebrated: “stray greys” are "black vines of your tresses," and wrinkles a "nest for my dreams." The beloved, ground in "Time's mills," becomes like "an urn baked in a kiln," carrying the "scent of / green earth." This ability to find beauty in decay finds cultural specificity in the final image of ‘sindoor,’ the vermillion powder signifying marital vitality.

Sigdel demonstrates a formidable range by shifting his gaze from the personal to the collective. In "Perspective," the mountains that are "beautiful for you" are "torture to us," the labouring women who must climb them, a juxtaposition so powerful the poet feels the “mountain shrank in my eyes.” This social awareness, clearly influenced by Neruda, comes into full bloom in poems like “Facade,” where the stage of history is painted with the "blood of the labourer" and "sweat of the farmer." 

This theme deepens in "An Ancient Fire," a complicated reflection on struggle. But the poem doesn't celebrate revolt. It looks at how insatiable it is, the unending ‘hunger for rights' is an eternal fire that burns ‘infinite arrogance of Bhairav'. This fire is not a simple inheritance; it jumps through history hinting that justice calling is fierce, relentless and inescapable in our existence.

Sigdel also turns inward, exploring the fragmented identity of the poet himself. Poems such as “Disintegration” and “Leaving Myself” untangle a splintered self in the face of bewildering choices. In one, the speaker walks “in the illusion of being whole,” while in another, he deliberately walks away from “Happiness” to march off with "Sorrow," lending philosophical depth to the collection based on a Kafkaesque notion of duty and self-sacrifice. This probing of the fragmented, self-denying self lends philosophical depth to the collection that complements its lyrical beauty.

No comment on this collection could do justice without mentioning the great role played by Stormy Hazarika, the translator of these poems. Translation is a profoundly empathetic act – the translator not only seeks to know what something means, but also to occupy its emotional and aesthetic space. Hazarika does an excellent job of it, along the way retaining Sigdel’s delicate, imagistic sensibility. It sounds authentic, visceral even, but always with the kind of poetic grace that doesn’t sound manufactured or too earthy. Lines like “The inky black night strokes hillsides, flowers and leaves / with different brushes” (“This Road We Walk”) or “Peach flowers laugh at stormy winds” (“Just Once”) feel alive and resonant in English, a testament to a translation that captures spirit as much as text.

This collection is a gratifying experience. This is tacit work of high intensity where strong emotions are expressed not so much directly but filtered through the precision and yet suggestiveness of its depictions of nature. With a tender yet fierce voice, Sigdel charts through love and time, memory and justice. In Stormy Hazarika’s clear translation, readers are welcomed into a world that’s deeply Nepali in its cultural texture but that mines the human heart. And this is less a window into one poetic heart than a mirror of the shared terrains that we all travel, those of longing, love and what remains still so elusive.

(Lama has translated several Nepali poems into English.)