The voices of the republic include dreamers, dissenters, and rebels against borders and authorities. One poem of resistance, from a different Indian language, each day this week.Credit: Jelle/Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0In a country that has no ‘national language,’ the presence of many languages is at once beautiful and politically charged.For a week from Republic Day, The Wire presents poems that throw open how our languages can be oppressive, oppressed, and insurgent. The poems are curated by Poorna Swami and Janani Ganesan, from a special edition of Asymptote, an online journal for international literature in translation.Each of these poems is a work of resistance but also of presence – asserting a future where our many languages, while different, are more accommodating of each other.#4O wind, do not sing sad songs O wind, do not sing sad songsLook at the falling leavesOne after another, scatteredOn a distantStraw-strewn Jhum fieldLook at the deserted pigeonSitting alone, sitting in agonyOn a branch of a leafless oak treeDon’t you hearThe plaintive songOf a lifeless ravineAnd the reddened morning sunFrom a night spent in tears.Do not sing sad songs, O wind,Do not tell sad stories any moreTell me insteadHow you spent the dreadful nightHow you resurrect yourself on your grave again.— Arambam O MemchoubiTranslated from Manipuri/Meiteilon by Kshetri PremKshetri Prem teaches in the department of rnglish at Tripura University. He is the author of Hijan Hirao: Text, Context, and Translation and two forthcoming poetry anthologies translated from Manipuri. This translation first appeared in the Winter 2017 issue of Asymptote, as part of its Indian Languages Special Feature. Asymptote is the winner of the 2015 London Book Fair’s International Literary Translation Initiative Award and a founding member of The Guardian’s Books Network with Translation Tuesdays.