Translated from the Bengali by Chirayata Chakrabarty

Now

1
The way I am right now
I cannot put it down, right away.
That the Now will be known as the Now, right now
Would be wrong to hope for.
And so, I quickly write down
the past and the future of my time.

The way I am right now
In that place between dawn and dusk
Washing down with sudsy water
The things that can be.
Clocks, pots, buckets and cloth
Doors and windows, and the plastic table cover.

Minutes and hours, covered in soapy bubbles.
Minutes and hours, what if I desert them and sleep on the small square of this moment?

Rather I seek my shelter in the foam of the sea
in my dreams.

2
Fear flees from group to group.
Fear leaps like a blob of phlegm.
Like a virus, contagious.
Like a boil full of bubbling pus, nauseating.
The bare facts and the half truths
Twisted and sharp like a witch’s nail.
They hop through groups
It won’t be right to just call it grim
It won’t be right to just think it wrong or bloody

It’s ache with a zest.
It’s murder by tickles.
It’s a torture, a long, slow process.
The way the traders of terror skin and rub salt,
Fear rolls,
Fear is rubbed into misery

Fear is the most valuable stock.
They invest in Fear and make a living.
Make one duel with another,
This is how they turn Fear into bricks,
Turn bricks into walls,
Then wall it up to build

A great big Silence.

—

I’ll Go Home

Swarms of waves come, to tell her – let’s go home, let’s go home
Slivers of the sun, that peep through the mellow blue sky
Tell her : Let’s go home, please, let’s go home

Her lover’s warm hands in a tender moment
They tempted her with the dream of a home
Let’s go home, let’s go home, let’s go home

The banks, keeled over, sink in her sleep
Hold on to the fragile ropes, cross the bamboo pool
an edged river, jagged rocks, washed away
But… cross it, and you’re home

In her sleep, flames surround her
The sky splits with lightning
An old homelessness fans and awakens a new one
It parts a way, and leaves
I am a refugee again, on the streets
I return, in tears, to beg
I’ll go home, I’ll go home, I’ll go home