TRANSLATED FROM THE BENGALI BY SUBHADIP DUTTA CHOWDHURY

Caress

Long before the conception, I made you, too, potent!
Despite that, every time our weary, mellowed fever
Looked for a profound azure
The bedsheet and pillow got dotted with tranquil and candid freckles…

****

You’re lying turning the other side. As though
A trail came walking along your spine

I set aside your lovelocks—
As your caress is tender and true

****

Mastered the art of Ikebana,
Yet you didn’t adorn me ever
Still your peppered sweat
Paints on my forehead

A dwelling of frilling uncertainty
Stay tonight. Leave a few days later…

Yamuna

Radha

You’ve harpooned a hymn into my body.
Even though, the Yamuna is desirous—
She, too, pulls me by my trickery
To caress the whole of me with each of her waves.

Whom is this teasing for,
Say, Shyam, what can one make out of this?

Meera

The trance of intimacy is not yet over. Betwixt this
The bansuri of Shyam unabashedly
Abandons me into the depths of Yamuna

Sri Radhika is Shameless. It’s been an aeon
By which trick can I bury this epithet?

Also, read as I Am Writing My First Lyric and Other Poems by Liljana Dirjan, Translated from The Macedonian by Ljubica Arsovska with Patricia Marsh-Stefanovska and published  in The Antonym:

As I Am Writing My First Lyric and Other Poems— Liljana Dirjan

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