Five
of my
most Favorite Jibanananda
Das
poems Brilliant
translation by Fakrul Alam Published
in The
Daily Star, December 13, 1997
The
Cat
Daylong I seem to meet a cat here and there;
In the shade of a tree, in the sun, and in the thicket of brown leaves;
After his success somewhere in stripping a few pieces of fish to the
bone
Celebrating in the dust for a while
Like a bee wrapped up in the contemplation of its flight;
Then clawing the barks of a krishnachura tree
And afterwards- chasing the sun daylong
He shows himself for a while
And then disappears who knows where.
In the soft saffron-colored glow of the late autumnal sunset
I see him rub his white paws in play;
Then catching the darkness as if it was a small ball
Scatter it on the whole world.
Cities
My heart you have seen many big cities;
Cities whose bricks and stones,
Accents, affairs, hopes, frustrations, and terrifying deprivations
Have turned into ashes in the cauldron of my mind.
Nevertheless, I have seen the sun arise amidst thick clouds in a corner
of the city;
I have seen the sun on the other side of the river of a port city,
Like a love-struck farmer he bears his burden in the tangerine-cloud
colored fields of the sky;
Over a city's gaslights and tall minarets I have seen - stars
–
Like flocks of Wild geese heading towards some southern sea.
Horses
We haven't died till now - yet new scenes come continually to sight;
Maheen's horses keep chewing grass in the late autumn moonlight;
As if horses from some Paleolithic age - lured
Into grazing in a dreadful dynamo of a world.
The stink from the stable drifts in with the onrushing night breeze;
The doleful sound of rustling straw rubs onto steel machines;
The few empty teacups are like kittens - asleep - under the slack watch
of mangy dogs
Chilled, you make for the cheap restaurant near by,
The placid puff of time blows out the paraffin lamp of the stable
Touching the Neolithic still moonlight of these horses.
The
Corpse
Where the silvery moonlight moistens in the reeds,
Where swarms of mosquitoes make their homes;
Where gold fish snap these blue mosquitoes
In silence, expectantly;
Where in a corner of the world, all alone,
The river takes on the tones of the silent fish;
Where the river, from its bed of reeds and tall grasses
Only has eyes for the reddening evening sky;
In the darkness of a starlit night,
Like a woman shaking a huge knot of blue hair,
Some other river stirs; but this is a river
Of multi-colored clouds and yellow moonlight;
Look up and you will see all that is dark and light disperse here;
Red blue fish clouds - pale blue moonlight
Take over; this is where MrinalinI Ghoshal's corpse
Will float forever; in blue red silvery silence.
A
Day Eight Years Ago
The word has spread:
To the morgue he had been taken dead;
Last night - in the darkness of Falgoon's early spring night,
When the five-day-old moon had dipped out of sight
He longed to die.
His wife had been lying next to him - his child too;
He had love, he had his dreams - it was moonlight
Why then would some ghost haunt him? Why then could he sleep no longer?
Or perhaps he hadn't slept for ages - at any rate, now he sleeps
soundly in the morgue.
He probably wanted this sleep!
Like a plague-infested rat, mouth foamy with blood
Neck huddling against some dark corner he sleeps;
He will never get up again.
"He will never get up again
He will not bear anymore
The heavy burden --
The deep unceasing pain of consciousness."
As the moon dipped down - In a strange darkness
Close by his window
Some mute thing, humped like a camel,
Delivered him this message.
And yet, the owl will stay awake,
The putrid paralyzed frog still pleads for a few more moments.
Looks for a gesture from another dawn, and yearns for its heat and
light.
I can still feel invisible mosquitoes swarming in monastic darkness,
Circling in vain the impenetrable wall of the mosquito nest,
Impelled by their lust for life to stay awake.
Even flies take off towards sunlight after perching on blood and filth
for sometime;
How often have I seen winged insects at play in waves of sunshine!
It is as if the sky is their own element - as if some diffuse
life-force masters their minds;
A grasshopper caught in the clutches of some wanton child
Still twitches and shudders to evade death;
Yet - after the moon had dipped and darkness spread over the land
You went all alone to the aswatha tree, a coil of rope in hand;
You knew that the life given a grasshopper or the doyel bird,
Was not the same as what to a man is offered.
Didn't the aswatha branch cry out? Didn't the' swarms of fireflies
startle
the bunch of golden flowers with their light?
Didn't the doddering blind owl come and say:
"Could it be the old hag of a moon has been swept into the swirling
floodwaters this day?
How splendid!
Let's catch a rat or two now!"
Didn't the owl deliver this cryptic but loud message?
This lust for life - the whiff of the ripening grain in the late
autumnal afternoon was to much for you;
Has your heart had its fill in the morgue?
In the morgue - where you lie in oppressive silence
Like a battered rat, lips smeared with blood?
Listen
To this dead man's tale.
No woman jilted him in love
He did not miss
A bit of marital bliss;
His wife went beyond what custom required
And gave him the taste of honey -
Honey from the hive of her mind;
He never knew in life what it was to shiver
From the chill of pain or the shame of hunger;
And is that why
Flat out on a table in the morgue
Defeated, he will lie?
Nevertheless, I know
A woman's heart -love - a child - a home - will not suffice
Not riches nor deeds nor even a life of ease -
Some other beguiling disaster
Frolics in our blood;
It wearies us;
Wearies - wears us out;
But the morgue
Is free of weariness
And that is why
Flat out on the table in the morgue
He will lie.
But still every night I look up and see,
The doddering blind owl land on the aswatha tree
It blinks and say: "Could it be that old hag of a moon has been swept
into the swirling floodwaters this day?
