Translated from the Bengali by Rajosik Mitra

Insane

You were insane back then, and so you’d begged for a piece
of gold cumulus to the sunset like a tramp
Sepia hills trapped between your eyelids
This sorrow took you tipsy down to night’s hell-bed,
endless bottomless down to a labyrinthine abyss
You thought yourself a butterfly, a bit too much flying
you did, womb to womb – all infertile, hey casanova, did you have canines?
Dirty nails of a bum? Did self-portrait mean only van Gogh to you?
Were you gripped by a strong desire to bathe in Pampa Sarovar one day,
bloodied stalk and stem, your follicles sucked on by leeches, you wanted to
come clean, purified; you were insane back then,
you saw sunset hue on the naked skin of evenings.

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Pampa Sarovar – Pampa Sarovar is a lake in Koppal district near Hampi in Karnataka, India.

Ode to Somenath

Passing through Sudder St. I saw Somenath
scraping his meal off a dumpster,
He too had mistaken for the innards of a wild musk
the scent of paint-glue trapped inside a polythene
a long long time ago on Eliot road;
wanted to eat the heart out of Jesus,
at dewfall, little beads of repentance
gathered over his forehead.

Fish-cranes take to the sky
wounded birds rain their feathers
and nowhere in his calves and thighs
could he find the golden mean,
Somenath;
he found the blessing
of the god of stones,
didn’t want to bathe in the
effervescent acid rain
that came gushing like waterfalls
out from between the evening’s thighs;
instead, wanted to make love
to Jinia in the fading rusty
dusty brown light of the moon;
wanted to tame the demon of staying alive
in the darkness of Stuart lane,
no, didn’t want to write poems
like Jhumkolata
Ice-cream and paanta-bhaat.

I wonder what he really wanted
a chandelier bright as the Sun
or a lock of hair from the Sea
I wonder who cursed him
to the darkness of Stuart lane;
Krishna Lal and the wiggle of a tapeworm
had moved him too much already,
there was a boat moored nearby, probably
when he heard echoes in deep blue
did he want to write something-
some lines, some words
that he couldn’t understand

he was a space-traveler

did he ever find himself again?
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Jhumkolata – Passion Flower
Panta-bhaat – Sticky, watery rice.