651 | Amrutlal | Udayan Thakker, India

Amrutlal *

With green ink, sometimes with red,
Amrutlal would very carefully, in neat handwriting,
write down his poems
in a leather-bound diary.
Sometimes he had a nightmare
that he died of the plague,
that his poems were never published
not even found.

But Amrutlal lived a long life.
(He was my friend.)
During his lifetime,

he saw the birth of his Collected Poems.
But he also saw them
age and die.

Udayan Thakker, India

Translation Udayan Thakker – Stanley Barkan

* Name of a person. (Literally, ‘Immortal.’)