Translated from the Bangla by Soma Roy and Kamalika Mitra
Before suicide one has to think
If it is the right poison
What causes the least pain,
Or does not disfigure the face,
Or if it leaves bruises under eyes,
One needs to know what causes instant death
Without any reaction.
One has to think, see, and smell
Is it liquid, solid, or a gas?
One has to know
Is it an iron rod?
Broken glass?
Sugarcane from the field?
Or bare teeth, claw, or a fleshy phallus
That will tear the vulva,
The nipples,
The navel
Those who
think of rape as a norm
As a treasure
sanction stealth
feel the least pain
Before a suicide
All this needs to be tested
Smelt, felt, fathomed –
Poisons are neatly arranged on a ballot unit.
✿
Come, let’s see a flower.
See the flower, and forget the fraud,
The plunderer,
The doer of all evil.
Come, see the flower.
the infant’s face in its pistil,
the disappearing rice of the middleclass,
The middleclass who has almost forgotten the existence of rice.
See the flower,
The mistake,
The end of all possibilities.
Here is the flower
Never seen before,
Will never be seen again.
Like a bird it will fly away.
And we too!
And in every trick,
In every pretense,
We will fail to see
Those who steal the rice.
Come, let’s see the flower.
Manishankar
