Fishes, don’t swim in surging shoals;Stay anchored by the shore.A poacher is coming—The river is under curfew.Dormant seeds,Rest underground;The soil is under curfew.No petal or leaf should grow—Someone might furrow the garden’s calm.By the latest decree,All sound is noise,All silence is peace.Fellow-cowherd, do not sing.The wind is under curfew.Greeting us a namaste with their guns,They have called for peace in every market square.A curfew envelops our town.No need to go to school—The children rejoice.Breaking into a poet’s house,Politicians plunder words.Some still hide underground:Independence, Salvation and Compassion.The town’s wrestler, thug, astrologer,Widow, beggar, politician,Shopkeeper, grocer, priest –everyone is in the house.Inside, women weave and unweave,Threads knotting and slipping under anxious hands.Children peep through chinksBy doors and windows.shoot at sightshoot at sightThoughts, hide yourself behind the unconscious;The conscious mind is under curfew.Do not stroll or dawdle outside,Do not raise your voice,Lest you be deemed subversive.Do not scream – you might interrupt peace.Do not bicker or talk defiantly to the khaki in command—A disquiet might mar the calm.shoot at sightshoot at sightDo not let the children cry,Do not let the dogs bark—Peace will be disrupted.The town is under curfew for peace,Buddha adopts a posture of silence for peace.Our eyes sting from teargas.Doused by the fire brigade,The road sleeps—supine, heavy-eyed with exhaustion,Dreaming of a crowd assembled in celebration:Clatter of boots, traffic jam, mayhem, horns,Rumble and thrum of wheels,The sub-district administrator’s ordersStrewn everywhere on the floor.shoot at sightPeace is on exhibitionIn a house of glass.Images of peace adorn the newspapers;The town remains under curfew.
Curfew
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English Translation Copyright © 2025 by Dhirendra Kumar Shah.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Rajendra Bhandari (b. 1956, Kalimpong) is a leading Nepali-language poet whose work has profoundly shaped the literary landscape of the Darjeeling hills and Sikkim. A former professor of Nepali literature at Sikkim Government College, Gangtok, he earned his doctorate from the University of North Bengal. Since his first collection, In the Veils of Cold Wintry Nights (1979), followed by These Words: These Lines (1986), Perishable / Imperishable (1998), and Hiccups of History (2019), Bhandari has written with clarity and restraint, weaving the lived anguish of the Gorkhaland movement into a voice at once lyrical, satirical, and metaphysical. His poetry bears witness to collective trauma—the martyrs and ruptures of 1988, 2008, and beyond—while also meditating on impermanence and spiritual endurance. Recipient of the Diyalo Purashkar, the Shiva Kumar Rai Memorial Award, and the Dr. Shova Kanti Thegim Award, Bhandari stands as a pivotal voice of the Nepali-speaking communities, bridging regional experience with broader Indian and world literatures. His selected poems were recently translated into English by Bikash Sharma and Rosy Chamling, titled 101 Poems of Rajendra Bhandari (Bukant, 2026).
Dhirendra Kumar Shah teaches English at Darjeeling Hills University. A poet and translator, his work explores shifting ideas of masculinity, Buddhism as a lived practice, and Eastern Himalayan poetry. He is the former editor of Teesta Rangeet, a poetry journal from Kalimpong, and the Kao – Himalayan Art Journal.
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