[Mostly transcreated from Bangla]
Travelogue
I am flying like a piece of paper in gusty wind
Not knowing where I’m destined to go,
Or swirling on the mid-sea like an aimless boat
Unwillingly offshored by a stormy blow,
Yet, like the diehard captain of a sinking ship,
I dangle from the mast with a compass at hand,
Trying to save myself and those aboard—
Someday or the other we may find a land.
Time, like a mythic beast of the olden kind,
Ruptured my dreams with blackish paws
Yet, I spend my days with a hope in mind
Like a slaughtered cock, mixing blood with dream,
That fidgets to live, with flapping beyond laws.
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Give Me another Apple, My Eve
Give me another apple, my eve,
It’s high time to leave
For an abode elsewhere in the space.
I finished my studies on earthly life but couldn’t trace
The reason why we are here
Since thrown to this planet, so naked and bare—
We sewed our clothing with fig-leaves but still
Can you guess how much nudity we hide with skill?
The dinos are yet to be gone,
In hundreds and thousands they’re born
Roaming around, with ugly dance,
They’re mutated to live, by chance,
In the society of humans as heroes so brave,
Humans are extinct or are living as slave.
Their heads are adorned with diamond crowns
Sovereign they are, having no ups and downs.
Angels of the Heaven still haunt us all,
Taking notes of the sins, moral heights and fall.
They are said to have no gender or sex
Be these genies or fairies, still they vex!
We play our part in a drama not known
What the story’s about and how much is shown!
What’s going on—what the hell—
Only genies and the fairies can tell.
The drama has no Chorus’s role
Who’ll warn the King to ensure equity in dole?
In the guise of serving what we want to take,
The monkeys do consume our shares of the cake.
The princess isn’t aware of her rightest groom,
The King chooses who will go to her private room.
Give me the apple that triggers the heaviest stool
To flood these structures of devils and pre-schedule
Our journey to a planet where life will not go in vain,
We’ll choose for us in the space a new terrain.
‘
We’ll leave but shout before the journey we make:
Why shall monkeys have the lion‘s share of our cake?
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Dangling from Mid-way to the Blue
Though not an Icarus I was,
Some flies in my brain did buzz,
Making me crazy for a flight toward the blue:
Some friends of mine and this me
With boundless joy, hope and glee
Framed the wings but with improper glue:
As I began my journey to the sky
“Up and up…” I heard them cry—
I thought my dream will certainly come true.
Now that I dangle from the space,
I hear them laugh in joyous face,
No one comes to my rescue, with tips or clue.
I call from above, shout at them:
Help, help, you help me, here I am,
With the same lot of games and plays we grew.
Pull me down or push me high,
Help me cross this middle-sky
And bring fresh light to illume the world anew.
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Deep into Your Darling
Don’t go so deep into a rose—
So deep you can see its core;
Take its smell, don’t touch your nose,
Love the sea but keep ashore.
Don’t go so deep into your darling—
So deep you can see her gall,
Because beneath her outward spring
She may show you autumnal fall.
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Inside the Darwinian Blood
A deer has a stomach and has feces too,
Mating for sex yields some fawns to a doe,
Yet, they are symbols of beauty as we say;
So are the damsels, maybe married or nay:
Hiding their girlish filth, they present such a smile
That can change the diehard vagabond’s style
To love the home and respond to romance and lust,
Discharge and sludge can’t affect grandeur,
Humans, with abdomens, are so noble and pure
With the lifelong stocks of mucus and cough;
The furies of nature and gods are beaten-off.
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The Pigeon Feast
Pigeon meat is good for health
That’s what my Mom had always said;
I was too young to understand
And so little an attention I paid.
Now that I am grown up and wise
See those who take it are the strongest guys.
Raccoon-like human hands
Go in and come out of the pigeonholes
To catch hold of the squabs,
Be they young or old but no one condoles.
Indeed,
Statesmen, irrespective of the caste and creed,
Enrich their menus with pigeon feast,
They need to see this in casual list.
Martial bugles are tuned against the squabs;
With the barbules and barbs,
Feathers are plucked from the neck of pigeons as seen
In the dresses of all forces, be they red, blue, or green.
Nations, at large, pose threat to the pigeons! They kill
To fulfill the mission of the Ministry of Home
In Parliament, there’s none to oppose the bill.
Pigeons cry in UN buildings—in holes below the dome.
Experts are absorbed yet careful in thought,
Conclude on completion of their theses on bird:
We need pigeons in thousands, meaning a lot.
We propose what, to some, may sound absurd
We need to breed and stop extinction of hawks,
If trained well, they’ll enrich our pigeon stocks.
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Desire for a UN Session on My Love
In five-star hotels, the damsels swirl in the swimming pool,
Herds of buffalos have mud-water to soothe and cool;
There’s nothing like these for me beneath the cruel sky,
As trees in bushfire, the climate has chosen me to fry.
Often I resort to a woman to forget my pain,
We play the game of heart for mutual gain,
Now it deems her touches emit a hellish flame;
Autumns are drawn back to the summer’s claim.
Dear Mr. UN, I demand a session in your floor
To raise my voice—the world must heed a tiger’s roar;
Global warming may burn this earth, bring it to ruin,
Why shall this affect my beloved lady, my queen?
You speak of human rights for the globe—
What else is more needed than the right to love!
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Words
Often I play around with words,
But they overdo the same with me.
At times, they appear to be better players,
I remain a fool, a child, compared to their skills.
I stretch out my tactful paws, like the clever Tom,
But words do behave as a Jerry so cunning and swift.
As if, by a charter, I’m allowed to play with them
But not given the right to catch or grasp.
Ah! here’s a word that looks like a drongo
That tempts me with its dangling tail!
Words are parrots flying with hisses in the air,
Shatter the realm of Nature with flapping of wings.
There are words that resemble the pecker birds
Hiding the faces, only half-known from their tails,
The meanings are blurred as if perceived in a sleep,
Ringing only half of the bell that I want to toll.
There’re words that dangle like bats in the darkness,
Don’t open their eyes wide for the fear of light;
They swing back and forth, dangling from a tree,
I have to sway and be happy with the little I see.
Words do suck the blood of poets, like a lizard does,
Failing to catch them at day-time, even if I try,
I see them leer and jeer at night,
Like the twinkling stars high above the sky.
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Audacity of a Withered Leaf
Be it in autumn (with the right for a leaf to fall),
Yet, I wonder how arrogant it was
To choose a moment that we still recall!
Couldn’t it fall in a time that’s righteous?
Engrossed as partridges or love-birds we were
Beneath a dying tree in the afternoon park
Sewing the fabrics of love that need repair;
The horizon was giggling before dark
As if tickled by a spirit on the western sphere.
We coupled our fingers for the promise to tie—
(We were about to say: ‘I love you’ isn’t a lie!)
The ring finger of yours with the little one of mine:
Sparrows and the sun, with its last-moment shine,
Witnessed our act of love; as we approached for a hug,
For an embrace, we were ready for a mutual tug
Right at that moment, it fell between us—
A withered leaf, looking pale and weary as carcass!
Be it in autumn (the season for a leaf to fall),
Yet I wonder how arrogant it was
To choose a moment that we still recall!
Couldn’t it fall in a time that’s righteous?
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Oh You Black Bird, Wait a Bit
Often she calls me by my nickname—
An unearthly, far-flung black bird she is:
A sibling of mine who was born as twin
But in no time after birth
Flew to the world of illusion, wholly unseen
But she fastened on my wrist a sisterhood tie.
I grew up alone as a prince, with beauty and charm,
Crossing my Mom’s love and Papa’s red eyes;
Built my kingdom—with a charter of my own,
Rich in colors and fragrance of youths,
Day-by-day I captured all the islands of spice.
I tasted the love of women, sucked their poisons and gall,
With loyalty and frailty of a middle-class spouse,
I polished the pale face with smiles,
Sorrows were taken easy as parts of the life.
To conclude, must I say: life is livable and good;
See a leprosic man smiling in a moonlit night,
Reminiscing his golden past;
Wives of the disfigured and wasted give birth to kids;
Happy are the women in polythene-sheds;
Finger-comb their hair in lines at leisure time ,
So do the farming girls painted by Quamrul on his canvas!
I won’t go now, Oh You Black Bird! Wait a bit!
Let me harvest some gold from the earthly shit.
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My Image and I in the Mirror
In my early childhood, I often tried to touch
The image of self as seen inside the mirrors.
As taught by my age and knowledge,
I’ve known: the one inside the glass
Is none but a reflected being—
The one outside the mirror is Me,
The real version of mine with flesh and blood.
Now, my childhood is gone,
Yet, I’ve moments of doubt, at times;
Since my teacher, named `Knowledge’ has died,
And ‘Wisdom’ did take her place.
Again, I stumble to be sure
Which one is my real self:
Is the image on the other side
The real version of mine?
Me being his image or illusion
With Cancer as the Zodiac sign!
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Invisible Weaver Bird
Might you not shine as a player of great skill!
A stadium full of fans, by clapping and voicing their thrill
Could instantly convey your talent to lovers of the game
Or, were you an actress with little shame,
Copying dialogue from the script, gesture of the neck,
Sway of the hip, half-open breasts would compose a pack
Of arts to reach an audience ranging from the old to a boy;
The nation would shiver with a high fever of joy.
Were you a painter with modest skill,
Just mixing of hues would give your canvas a thrill;
Standing beside your own works on display,
You could explain how it’s a parrot but looks like a jay!
You chose to be a craftsman of words—an invisible weaver bird—
Lonely knitting an endless nest with Tyrrells absurd.
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A Question to Prophet Noah
You were too a prophet definitely sent by God
For the welfare of the humankind;
So long I have heartbeat and breath
I can’t degrade your dignity and elegant grace,
No, I am not an atheist of that kind
But a question has haunted me at times
I longed for an answer to this question all my life;
Queries may lead to the finding of truth—
That’s what God Himself has said:
I recall the Flood in your time at the global scale
Occurred to punish the bad souls for sinful acts,
Your Boat had sheltered only those who were good,
The ones who were honest, with moral heights;
You boarded the seeds of crops, seedlings of plants,
Poultry and livestock, birds and animals of other kinds,
And whatever was needed for the future world.
I recall the rebirth of the globe that was free from sins,
Mankind did rejoice and suck the breasts of a Holy Earth
Yet, how come those pure sperms and virtuous wombs
Could parent these offspring of the devilish types?
They are growing in numbers to rule the world.
I’m afraid: if such a flood devastates the world again,
The good souls will be thrown from the Boat
By the bad ones of these types to reign the world!.
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Illustration : Rajat
