Translated from the Bengali into English by Alam Mahbub
Before the Dream Voyage
With darkness in the eyes, those who sit
engrossed in this twilight tavern
will whisper stories of light to you.
Drifting on clouds of those tales,
they might take you to any solar realm
within this darkness—some luminous, foreign planet.
Yet dust clings to your feet,
and in your nerves still burn
the suffocating fumes of a city choked by traffic and diesel.
You’ll float like an empty balloon in a cold wind—
and even then,
the blisters scorched on your back by a brutal summer
will ache.
Will you become a meteor?
Or in this very darkness,
wait for a lighter—or perhaps, for dawn—
you may still reconsider,
before the dream voyage begins.
………………..
Life Philosophy
Inside, clouds of memory form a dense dark—
A torrential rain is about to pour! Yet outside—sunlight.
Things are alive—flowers, crops, homes,
The gleeful face of a child even has a lover.
Everything is there. Still, vast emptiness
Burns every joy throughout the day.
Forever hidden from sight, this wildfire!
No one ever sees the black shadows of the past!
And yet someone thinks you are happy—
Isn’t that natural? What do you think?
…………………..
An Elegy of Failure
I carved a sculpture
wrought of a wondrous woman’s grace.
In the fathomless darkness of her tangled hair,
night descends, spreading branches of mystery’s face.
At the corner of her lips, the night’s deepest secret lies,
like the restless waves of an angry ocean.
The more I strive to reveal her in the light,
the more she hides, elusively, in shadows dressed.
At failure’s feet, deep devotion softly rolls,
her silent longing is stored beyond what’s said.
The ‘I love you’ she utters is but a faint echo,
while quietness veils the words unsaid.
What little I build of her is only a hint,
I’ve never fully touched her whole being’s art.
My yearning turns into a dense lament,
sorrows shroud the night sky in my heart.
………………
Decline
The moon within clouds? Or clouds within the moon?
In a corner of a lonely flat
two wings gasp for breath in a silent swoon.
No wind there — nowhere
yet chaos brewed —a sudden mystic storm’s bloom.
That storm-ravaged self, once whole and bright,
now plunges down the abyss, lost to light,
after a long forty winters, still descending,
no sign of ending.
………………..
For the Dark-Skinned Girl
This poem is for you, O young girl—
you who loved not the poet, but the poem’s essence.
You—dark sorrow of girlhood, unnamed,
to whom no one ever, even by mistake,
whispered, “I love you.”
To you, I offer this verse—
unknown villages’ dusk and sleepless ache,
this poem is for you.
Your life—like an abandoned house, moss-ridden,
this poem, as solitary as your silence,
words that sulk, brood—
keep them close to your heart.
They will be forever with you.
No man ever tucked a rose in your hair bun.
Then I will give you words—this garland of gardenias:
gently, hold them in your hair—
let their fragrance sweeten your solitude.
Has anyone ever offered you a love song?
Does it matter—those brittles, clichéd words?
Be with yourself, be with this poem—
From within these silences
shall arise the purest passion of love—untamed, unbound.
……………..
Illustration : Rajat
