Poet Susmita Nepal belongs to a generation of Nepalese writers which came into prominence from the 1990s onwards. Herself a mother and a daughter, she wrote the following poem which uses simple language to portray the profound and great love of a mother

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Mother

Susmita Nepal

Mother cuts each morning

with the edge of a sickle

With all her strength she bundles life

into a heap of grass

then lays it down

before the hunger of cattle

While milking cows,

in each stream she sees

the white teeth of laughing children

She is puzzled by the way pots and plates

stare at herself, ablaze at the stove

Sorrows appear before her

and dance rhythmically

She just gazes at them

Unspoken words she gathers

for her unmarried daughter

She wants to hide the rising moon

in the folds of her clothes -

a snack to erase her hunger

sharpened by loneliness

Memories of her son gone abroad

become a thousand days and vanish

Each time, Mother plants seeds of hope

in the folds of forty year-old scarcity

But these seeds never grow

It can't be said when he'll return

to fix the broken dam in her heart -

her son gone abroad

Translated by Manjushree Thapa

From The Country Is Yours by Manjushree Thapa (Penguin Books, 2009).

Copyright c 2009 Susmita Nepal and Manjushree Thapa. With permission of the author.

*Third World Resurgence No. 289, September 2014, p 44