TRANSLATED FROM BENGALI BY CAMELLIA PAUL
Moon’s Eclipse, Earth’s Elapse
You were eclipsed beneath my shade.
Too late to the terrace, I found you gone.
Even now, you’re hardly around—
Only your mellowy aroma
Lingers in the chilly air.
Only a while later did you emerge,
My shadow still clinging to you,
Like a veil of smoldering dusk.
Umbra, penumbra—light subdued.
For a long, long time—so long.
In time, your shimmer returns,
A toy sword—keen and bright.
Slowly—achingly slowly,
My darkened world recedes—
A wisp of a shadow on your body.
Your light, your gloomy face,
your stains and craters, your towering peaks and caverns—
All
One by one, they slip away from the
Smoke balloon of my inflated shadow.
My cosmic phantasm ebbs to fade,
Dissolving in the midnight hollow.
My Earth is vanishing—
Lost in the black… black void around you.
Cloudy Cupid
Speak, O speak of your lush wellbeing!
Could you ever be as dark as I am?
Struck by the din of arrows unceasing,
To love anymore seems more of a scam.
When union was flooding either shore
My tattered paperboat could not sail–
With what heart should I settle this score
As the ebbing morn-tide leaves its trail?
At daybreak, adrift in the briny deep,
I yearn to burn beneath the sun.
As if your darkest hairwaves quip:
“Let’s die where the endless had begun.”
What quiver have you filled for the chase,
Your spine like a bowstring held in your arm?
If the ground beneath were to lose its place,
I see you on the softest skyfluff charm.
Also, read Book Review of Han Kang’s Human Acts by Sanchayita Biswas, published in The Antonym.
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