TRANSLATED FROM BENGALI BY PARTHA PRATIM DAS
Lovers and their Lady-loves
One day lovers become husbands
Husbands, no longer lovers
But they have omelette or sandwiches
Stroll around leisurely
Smoke country cigarettes
And watch blue films at night
And lady-loves? What happens to them? They become wives, get pregnant
Words are lost somewhere. The kitchen light turns on.
If There is Love
I stay alone day and night
In fear. Everything seems
Broken, disintegrated.
Those who have girlfriends
Leave for the unknown…
Through the grass
I’ve this hand
Stretched out—
If there is love
Or you are human,
Pull the strings,
Let the sitar play on.
Moments
Maybe it’s ten o’clock.
Morning. No sun.
Monsoon wind. Free. Flying around.
No longer bothering the wrongs of my life.
Someone asked me to write love poems
the other evening.
Today when I came back to the fig tree, I felt the green leaves coming closer to me, turning greener,
As if they are dreams or poems
Of morning, or afternoon, or evening or of night.
The faraway Table
Now that I’m getting old, why bother about stories of kingfishers?
I liked the handloom sarees
So much in the sixties.
Liked the woman in handloom saree even more
So many years gone with them
Slightly tired today. Though still I like
The scene where four or five people
Sitting around a girl in a faraway table.
Also read, Faith by Mojeer Ahmad Azad, translated from Urdu by Syed Kashif, and published in The Antonym.
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