২৫ (বলাকা )

Verse Twenty-Five

Spring came in happy ruckus
With her clamorous cortege
Whereby,
Filling my yard with laughter and flowers
The forest with new leaves,
Painting deep scarlet kisses across the sky.

Quietly paid me a visit today
A very different spring.
Sat in the corner of my room
Pondering.

Surveyed the endless sky, spring did
Her gaze fixed to that spot, where
All the green faints and fades into blue
Becoming one under her deep, curious stare.

অনাবশ্যক

In Vain

In the lonely kaash woods by the creek

I asked her, "Who might you be?

With your lamp, protected from the wind

Under your cautious drapery?

My home remains unlighted, bleak

I could use your lamp, if you can

Leave it here for me." With a stare

She refuses, for she has a plan,

To float her little lamp in the river

This, I find quite pointless

I notice her lamp slowly drift

Away in the water, in darkness.

Another dusk descends. I stop her

To ask, whether perhaps, tonight

As her home is so brightly lit

She may part with her little lamplight.

She is still for a moment. Dark eyes

Stare at me, as she says

"But this... is for the dark skies

To keep a little corner ablaze."

I stare up at space and I see

How her little lamp burns, pointlessly.

The night of the new moon returns

I make yet another request

To her, as she walks slowly by

Clutching her lamp to her chest.

"My home remains unlit tonight

Give me your light, kind princess!"

In the darkness, she lifts her dark eyes

"This one is a tribute," she says.

A tribute to the autumn fete of lights.

Yet again, I remain a witness

To her light, burning among countless others

In effulgent, vain endlessness.

আঠারো

Eighteenth Poem

(For Mr. Charuchandra Bhattacharya, in devoted friendship).

Do we ever desire end of abjection?

Grief gratifies us, brings us pride.

That our deepest distress won't embody the eternal

Is discomforting

Denting our dignity in pain.

Life expends saved bits of being

Scattering existence on the trails of forever time

The wheels of time flattening, fading

Traces of deepest despair.

Deaths of our dearest

Demanding memory, whispering, "remember always."

Life's demands are unaccounted however

Clamoring, closing in on all directions.

In the crowd of now

Past's needs could be imperceptible,

Now and then

Words rise to the surface of disappearing pain

Dignity of sorrow takes pride in privation

Tells off life's emissaries, refuses admission

Fields of consciousness rife with fascinating fertility

With sullen pain, entrenched in the middle

Fortified, deserted, in silent unyielding mutiny

Tallying death and dying in mute indignation.

Self-defeated, but defiant

Unable, to bury the mind

To let go of a deep fetish

Fixated on desolation.

Much like the desire to rule, possess, be known

Deeper still, the desire

To command dark, undisturbed realms of pain.