The following is a translation and transcreation of the eminent poet, Mohan Rana’s poem, “Anuvaadak” (“Translator”).

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Nothing is Translated in Love and War

Nothing is translated in love and war—
between unseen interlocutors,
doubles of our names,
shadows of each other,
like that elusive silhouette—
anonymous images
in a gallery of unclaimed mirrors.

Like you and I—
once strangers,
lifelong seekers
of an unmarked address,
that became the nomad’s shelter.

Then, suddenly, in the tossing
of night into day,
a singular name,
etched in the creases of memory,
emerges
against the half-lit walls
of thought.

Face to face,
we become two pronouns—
uttered in a single line—
in need of no frontiers, no fences,
or punctuation, because
none wants to decipher
the grammar of this language.

Having lost our names,
we find ourselves—again—
you and I—strangers,
nursing the same old fear,
alone in a world
teeming with voices.

In prisons, where friends
and foes serve pain—
translators are essential.
In courts, where truth and fiction
haggle for justice—
words must be measured,
chessboard-style,
played in coins.

Between doctor and patient,
in sterile hospitals,
amid the commerce of cures,
where life and death
are advertised like wares—
insurance, in many tongues,
tries to translate
what “life” means.

There are no sentries
in love and war—
no interpreters
between tyrants and the tyrannized
in the chronicles of history.
Words mutate,
rituals re-narrated,
a dirge sung in unison.

In love and war,
there are no witnesses
no proofs—
only perspectives
that seek to give
and hide
meaning from each other.
Each shoulder bears
its own archive,
boxed and sealed
in the memory-marketplace.

Under every cloud,
a translator lingers
like an umbrella—
writing silent monologues,
confessions
already recorded by time
on a stone adrift in water,
its smile fading
in the river’s midstream.

Nothing is narrated
in love and war—
only jesters abide,
indispensably in the wings.

Love leaves no sign,
but it alters—forever—
the view from a single window
of what once felt like your own.

Nothing is translated
in love and war.

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About Mohan Rana

Mohan Rana, the eminent Indian poet of Hindi, was born in Delhi, and lives in Bath, in Britain. His most recent collection of poetry is Ekant Mein Roshandaan (Skylight in Solitude). He has published ten poetry collections and several of his poems have been commissioned for translation by the Arts Council England, among others. His writings have also been translated into several European languages.