I have been written this poem for long, for a long time I
have written none, or is this true that I never wrote
any poems, before, now,hereafter?
Then what shall I call this?
All these that i write down,
like a ggrieving, wailing mother?
Delinquent, unruly words, what are these?
Sometimes in meteredrhymes, sometimes in dog-generals.
loud, flashy,gentle, sauntering,
sometimes in devine prose, what will I call them?
Music pedding images, delirious words, delirium?
I can't make out what thwords want to say
Why do they ring out in every stanza and rhyme?
They fear not death, nor do tthe measure life either,
roll on each other, jump and scatter away,
drip down as moon through a crack in the clouds.
Is poetry then a bright shimmering liquid poison
which terrifies me?
In the crumbling deep blue stage in the sky,
we are dancing, the prick lights the flame.
The geometric perfection of home is charred
when it comes close.
Or are they unforgiveing foams of the sea ?
tara tak tak---marching in a moonlit frenzy,
jack booted knoghts whorush the bay ,
brine eats away the fortress door?
Is poetry self confession?
Grabbing the mike
with desperate fingers in the empty unlit hall,
the body burns with fever,
but Rome is burning somewhere too.
To say what has to be said in incomplete sentences,
looking for meaning in the circlesand orbits of existance?
I have not written ppoems for long
I see them nowdays in painted masks,
wearing, flaming shades in their shirts,trousers and shoes,
walk into restaurants, parks, magazines,
stroll inside apartment homes
Those who are ypung now,
those who sow seeds of loneliness
and angst bearing plants,
poetry come into theirhomesand dress-as-they-like;
Cassandra, Rommel, Jinnah, chorous of a Greek play.
Was it the same for me too?
In empty handed conclusions
But my own embroidery was weaved by faithful Penelope.
Can Iutter after twenty odd bygone years,
all that I wanted to say?
Have I said it?
Is my poetry the scream of conscience?
The eternal friend ?
The Saint of the Poor tells the cabinet minister,
"Just see, from which sun does all that light come?"
My poetry through the cruel wintry night,
against a frame of deepo darkness,
wweaves a gorgeous tapestry
with the threads of summer and spring.
When I am alone, I stealthily open my old books.
"When the hobo huddles down", for the night,
so carefully kept in the bottom drawer,
when the world belongs only to the gentle Neptune,
the Midnight Express racesdown the night,
and memories return like the speeding-train;
restaurant,magazines,coffee, cigarettes,
pin-ups,her voice on the telephone,
strached white shirts, Frigging,
the sudden desire to descend for a swim,
in the afternoon,
the stolen volumes of poems from the cautious bookshop,
self-pollution, the poem hidden in the pocket
which I wrote that afternoon,
the oven remains warm
from the glow of the evening's fire
There was a time once,
when i kept the faith that,
poetry along would conquer,
all the beautious and beasts;
and after that my family,
who forever say that, "in the lakes of poetry
bubble hungry bellies,torn slippers, cheap liquor,
addiction to painted hookers-----"
And then Bangladesh, Asia, Africa;
formats and formats of poems
would fatten on into Deluxe editions,
would readout poems of mine.
My date of descent
would become a red holiday in calendars all.
What did you do with those days?
Days from which the throb of jazz would shine
like freshly minted cooins?
are they dead now?
Destroyed, destroyed?
I stood alone in the station
Three O'clock train had just disappeared'
In the distance the flower trees stands,
wearing red scarves.
The shutters close down fast ,
The store keepers goes home,
somebody somewhere practices her
voice on the harmoniumthe whole day.
Ihave never seen her but always fantasized,
that her two bare feet,
would be as pure as dove wings.
And on her forehead would be,
the carefully painted black teepgtalics.
The music teacher, he is our neighbour,
an umbrella under his arm,
walks through the orchard everyday,
into a distant never-neverland.
The white maned- medicine man,
tired looking for rare herbs,
stands with downcast eyedbefore the dope shop.
"
Water trickles down without end,
a naughty lad has left the tap open,
"Go home boy, go home."
cuckoo cries somewhere.
Someone comes at night knocking at the door,
the wind shivers.
"Are you home, Doctor Sir?"
Father buttons his coat with feverish fingers.
In the lantern's glow,
mother watches him silently, taking the lamp from my hand,
and I watch the huge masksof shadow
hanging from the threads of light.
Outside, the restless horse crans his neck,
Clip clop clip-clop of the iron hoof.
With the stetho and the black-bag
he rides away into the night , the midnight rider;
Returns in the morning with an eloephantine melon
and a serene smile.
Taking mother aside, softly tells her,
"Wanted a boy but had a girl,
born just before the morning prayer's calls."
Will she too practice scales on the harmonium?
While chewing a guava, learn from a close friend,
the eternal immodesty of the bridal night?
Whities witth tatooed arms guffaw loudly.
standing at the main road.
Stopping their war jeeps scream,
" Hey boy you know the way to the cat house?"
The train dozes idly in the sun
at the station ,like Paltu's Granddad.
Whities will fly away in that
when the yellow fanged Japs will arrive.
Then i would go off to Rangpur,
where Debdas has gone away that year
with his parents.
He left me his mechanical-top,
The top still spines today,
Mad Meher on the tri roads of time.
The rumble of laughter frightens home and hearth,
roar of machine retches out,
startles the dream,
banishes reality,
Darjeeling mail whistling fanatically
charges like a trident from the dark
into a deeper darkness.
And I receive upto myself that clanging thrust
hurtling over mountains-seas-oceans-vallyes,
And I hang in the emptiness held by a snowy rope.
Abusive when the belley's full with booze,
I take the whore on my lap
She suddenly says,"Hey-mister.
Why do you ask such cuckoo staff ?
Shall I put the light off or will it stay on?
Hey,fuck me easy,I ain't diseased."
But I Am. The mustered heart lying underneath
The tormenting grind stone.
"But you know how it is with love"
You said that to her who was
The epicenterof your hulking youth,
She had all the signs of a centrifuge,
and the ferociuos force throws away
into megaspace the broken bits of screws,
meters, machines,-----
It's not easy to return
Who can come home . "Move on, keep moving on."
since only moving makes sense, keep moving on.
I hope not for harvests but sow seeds
In the bitter land
From that seed to another,
the present drifts into the past
the ppast breeds the present again
what a wonder.
This is what I have learnt
from the old wise ghosts, from my father,
from etched parchments, the deep resonant chants
of the proud black alphabets.
But what sort of voyage is that ?
Ahead? To the right? Left? South West? East? North?
North?
East ?
Which way ?
You may perhaps bend a tough strip of blue metal,
but although a river's resemblance is sought in poetry,
in truth, she is only a waterway of dreams,
hoards no water within herself.
From the incandescentglittering lake of genius,
it gurgles down in yellow coils,
distributing the news of harvest to the world,
disappearing into the ocean of memories.
What will they do at the Academy, University,
Quarterlies,
Writer's Guild with the magic of their home-spun clothes?
Those who can do, will do
I was so afraid of the dark,
My father said,"Whatever is e vanescent,
emerges from the dark.
He would again say,"Darkness is not absence of light,
darkness is it's own eternal possibility."
Why is Krishna imagined as dark?
Why does that fearsome goddess Kali,
reside in Bangla alone?
In times of sorrow and plague,
why does she so often visit our mind?
why so much dark water ,
in the folds of summer storm ?
Why is a lover called," The dark one ?"
Why does the dark eyereflect back all the joys,
hopes, despaires, defeats and fears of life ?
Why does Krishna recline on the golden neck of the tiger?
What does Bangla's artisan mean by this qeer contradiction?
Lying in the darkness of the autumnal chill,
I hear my father speak.
As if the sun-god at mid day
converses with tthe adolescent speck
of a tidal flat in words of fire.
"Darkness isn't darkness."
The night springs at once into life
and I felt that my being will roll
like a tiny pebble,
in the stream of supernatural jazz.
As if he had laid-down a few seeds
in the fresh land,
and crops danced up to the horizons.
Threatened by so many squalls,
the anger of thunder and rain,
the veto of floods,
but still and always firm.
Always saving itself
by becoming a friendly coffee-housse,
the red seed in the womb.
Or wants to, that's the truth.
What happens or will happen isn't as deep
as the desire to see it happen.
Whatever be the end , the wreath
or the gold I know,
desiring the king.
We collect her etched golden medallion,
to buy what we canme out for oh-so-long ago
all the merchandisesof our dreams, called poetry
songs, love, democracy, sadness, home,et cetra et cetra
I too will have a home, a home of art.
Chandrabati shall be sister of mine,
I know the wreath of the snake-god
means the victory of men,
King Chand has to surrender to that,
and Iam still awake on the night watch
of the iron bridal chamber,
with my eyes on the treacherous snakehole,
in the moon dipped time.
Portugese pirates strikes the river wreathed
village at Pabna, I observe the mysterious chemistry
of semens at the" night of violated modesty".
and i at Mulin Rouge too,
so many nights have filled goblets
of wondrous wine ,
drained it again and againwith friends
filtering it with poetry and aart.
never return home.
At home
armies of cockroaches and termites ride free,
ric kety beds, old letters, late father's
sepia on the wall. My kid brother counts down
thedoomsday time of the derilict house .
When will the walls go, whenwill the roof crash?
Carols in the dun, Fleur De Mal
in one hand, I steer the "golden boat"
with the other loses myself in a
strange land, I float there.
My thoughts blossom slowly likebeads of sweat.
In the twillight hour
the binder delivers my volumes of poems.
After seven years I have sold only three hundred,
gave away two hundred more.
In the afternoon Ifloat down the river,
alone in a boat,
read out to myself poems from that book.
The water shimmers underneath,
with the rays of my words as the
sun shines down from above.
There is eternally beautiful youth,
leaning against the crystal pillers of will and wish,
cigarette held between shattered lips,
looks like a water tranced fish.
I remember the white bellied woman,
Remembering whom I write down,
with fwverish speed in de adent forms,
pile and pilesof notes.
It would have best if I could,
like the kid tramping through the midnight street
suck dry the darknessof embers.
And that would have been the poetry mine.
At least it would be a private affairs,
not concluding finally,
at the table of vulture's feast.
The salt that erodes the fortress walls,
if spread over the maggoty flesh of life,
could perhaps haveturned mourning
and defeat a little more edible.
But I am demon possessed
keep on writing on discarded envelopes
or just within. I am certified a recent lunatic
when I through up words in a restaurant,
write on without end.
And I watch and see,
nothing really touches, nothing really matters.
Whatever was, is whatever is.
Rebelion returns to Bengal
with religiousroutine,
people fly with family
to c lose relatives far away for holidays,
celluloidlovers break-up make-up,
Academicians shoot off to States and Europe,
their printed good-byes in the classified ad-pages.
The pungent flavour of Hilsa, the monsoon fish.
still drown so many boiling revolt,
anger, tears and pain. Men live on,
then blessing their brood for endlessgenerations,
drift of intothe world of incense and coffin.
Devil floats in the goblet of wine.
Pulp fictionsmiths write books.
Same, everything is exactly the same.
But I still push on,
still write on
perhaps because it's not easy,
to forgetwhat i learnt for eighteen years,
or forty isn't far off.
It isn't practical to be an apprentice,
to another new trade now. The hair line recedes,
the belly is no long iron-cast,
fleccidity hunts the prick.
Father is dead long time,
but not before learning that number one son,
is a fascinated prisoner of literature,
whores booze and adultery.
Spouses are indifferent, and young ones
great me respectfully nowadays.
At the winter of night ,
clip-clop, two horses leave with an ancient corpse.
Parimal Prashanto, Shyamal, Debdas, Moqbul
hail me suddenly by my nickname
from the darkness.
This age is no age to worship a new deity.
Similies drive away sleep,
imageries halt addiction.
There are sounds which look exactly
like the girl I met only moments ago.
Lying with her Ishare the darkness,
nibble her lips shiver;
rockets tear apart the sky of my skin,
Ikeep writing on.
The image of the water traced fish
returns again and again.
Villas, couples. heroes all drown
in seven leagues of dark water .
Multi colour ads flickeroff on .
The silent laughter of the city encircles,
like a killerfishing net.
The jingle of coins is all around.
In the blistering sun-washed chicpavement,
ladies fashins change fast.
Tagore's birthday is celebrated every year
and Abdulah bakes bread in the ancestraloven.
If you wanna go visiting any Saturday night,
If you want,
I can take you to house,
I know.
Nowadays my bread isn't made
with that kind of dough.
So I will stay back in the balcony
and float away on the wings of celestial tobacco
into the Republic of Dreams.
And I shall see with my intense eyes,
the thighs,like a bunch of bulbing carps,
dance in the hall-room inside a fish cage.
"You are hopeless, Sir. Ten chips more or
less,would it really have mattered?
Tell me where would you get a decent pussy at this price?"
The ex-revolutionary, he is in the crowd too.
Not finding patriotism in my poems
he screams," Fuc him boy."
He too comes looking for a fuck.
That man is here too,
who has a thousand pricks in his flesh,
writes editorials, keepsgoing to the loo.
You will see, surely see,
how the hairy hands of hope
tear open the buttons of lust.
This city silently laughs
all the way to the morning.
The water traced fish.
Seven lengues of water
Who can say,
whether all thesedress up for me,
just this way because of the good,good tobacoo?
With feverish fingers I make poems
like a cigarette-roll. Every-thingis water tranced.
And I'm no exception.
But I want exceptio9n sometimes.
I congregation there is victory in life,
and the exceptions are the flag-bearers.
Those who had climbed the fortress walls,
like long rows of ants,
had turned into pouring rain drops,
in the middle of the night.
There was no place for them in the cemetery,
no tombstones carved in their memory,
but the names shimmer
in the billboard of the stars.
and so the dark night ceases,
so the brave fire in the tents and camps,
the unleavend bread resembles the Prophet'ts tongue.
So Telemec huses grow in numbers everyday,
and place their eyes on the distant horizon.
My father used to know the answer
and I don't even understand the question,
Events and reason, space and time,
are all Greek to me.
How easily he would let the mountain kissing pigeons,
fly away into the cloudless sky,
and they would return back to his hand,
burning white circles in the blue sky.
And I see the blossoms of conciousness
drip endlessly from my own hands and arms.
They fly away although there is no tempest,
driving them from the land of certainty,
never to return home.
The garden slowly decays.
I understand the famished earth,
but I know not where the seeds huddle.
In tthe strange twilight avenue
whea I watch my father praying
as I sit in the moviehall of memories,
I smell incense.
Prashanto Shyamal calls .
The fishermen's village burns again
in distant Kurigram .
T he war jeep halts again
Parimal runs away to India at dawn.
Paris steals Helen again .
I dig a tunnel to heaven through a whore's cunt,
He had the answer and I don't know the question even.
My dreams don't beget a minaret in the desert dunes,
I don't see him walk across the fiery sands,
like the image of an eternal
father for fourteen hundred years,
not even hear the voice of clouds,
resting a sad tired head on my arms,
taking off the string from the bow ,
climbing down from tthe chariot.
My city has turned off all its lights.
and then someone has muddied,
all the road-marks and signs.
The nameless by-lanes and roads
like shrivelled intestines,
coil down into the belly of hope.
"How will you go home so late?"
"Shall I come with you ?"
"No, it's not necssary."
She had said that so long ago,
yet the words keep coming back again.
They ring in times of victory.
"Shall I come with you?Shall I come along?
Do you like this flowers?
" You can take them.
I don't even like flowers."
" That's so strange. Who doesn't love flowers?"
Flaming flowers in your ehair,
saris trimmed in red,
you sing sitting at the foot of the old Oak
at Ramna,
so many of you .
Yet how is it your feets are never,
like the wings of dove?
What strange agony drives Shyamal,s sister
to suicide, in distant Kurigram ?
She does it, she does it everyday,
till today. And even now oout here,
the midnight express still whistles on.
What Tagore music has done for Bengal,
how broken hearts mend,
the dream-- is around,
the silver door comes together ,
bellys swell up in pregnancy
under a supernatural touch,
all these news will wait for none.
"Before you make Bangla your own", people say,
"you will belong to Bangla alone.
Within the droought,
famine, revolution, snake-pits,
the shril cry of the blue bird,
they shall turn into theeyes of the boat's prow.
But I do not become one!
I am a slave of the celestial tobacco dreams.
The more I lose faith,the more I sell
myself to the embrace of the tobacco smoke.
I have been poetry for long:
Suddenly I watch the dragon summer storm
burst out in pent up crecendo,
In the sailing winds, in the rolling rocking boats,
in the rage at Demra,
bridges fly in the air, goats and mules
fly in petrified fear over the top of villages.
Hearing the scream of unborn children
in their mothers wombs, patriarchsclimb minarets
The minarets crumble under the wight
of God's footsteps.
As if a terrible explosion has torn apart
the painted canvas.
The empty frame swings wildly.
The twisted corpse of words lie like white shrouds,
lie on every page.
A moment shows the ravage of my own village,
built with my own hands.
Shall I mourn them ?
Shall I too change my robe,
just like the water tranced boy,
make it through the night,
sucking the breast of an easy whore ?
Write poems on all tthe cunts with my prick?
Mix ship's bilge with the foams of wine ?
Oh Lord, poetry doesn't let go.
Once the teeth has left its mark
the woound never heals.
So many miracle drugs,
so many times so many walls,
so many stations:
from so many chilly shrivelled hotel rooms
I have returned to the small cubicle
on the varendah.
Then again a new love, a drink,
a new feast. Ihave discoverd with wonder
the precise mechanical jaws of new fangled tools.
But the flaming wound has never healed .
The moon has tickled it with its lunar fingers,
in the nocturnal translucence of poetry's joy and pain.
The bride that died at Kalidaha
had a neclace of water-beads around her.
I am her man, forever waiting
on the hewn steps of stone and time.
Descending into the streets today,
I saw a new boulevard,
shining-asphalt, gardenias arranged across
the colourful borders of her dress.
Talk Krishnachura trees, car rushing by
like merilly laughing lasses,
shop-signs are cooing happy pegions,
the city trips on a stick of dreamy tobacoo.
What do you call the street?
Don't remember seeing it before.
"Man you gotta go." I shallfoot the road
at early seven, in the cool bridge shall walk
with the stream of girls, I shall halt,
I shall stop and read the sign-boards,
the warm letterings, clothes from Pabna,
eclairs, mustered oil,
best facial creams, famous wrist watches,
pills, syrup, tea, tomato ketchup.
Somebody somewhere is turning everything
into gold with a Midas touch.
Do you remember fulbarai at dawn?
You alighted from the train,
holding your father's hand with trembling fingers.
The horses look back at you
and old people who have seen,
every frame of memory change
with every clip-clop of the horse's hoof.
See the red flowering tree is being cut down.
Shefali crushes down, Banerjeessteal away to exile,
ritual evening songs end at Patuatali,
and they can't understand whose bed
keeps keeps growing larger,
like a miraculous prayer mat.
In Islampur,
Sat Rouza, Nazira bazar, on the varendahs of Narinda,
they nod in a doze and watch,
whose girl braids her hair on the balcony,
whose trunks come down from the horse-carriage,
whose belonging drift away
in the darkness of twilight?
Well bound back numbers of literary magazines
sell on the footpath. Bats fly free.
With the ascent of dawn,
Astone plaqe on every corner
of the roads and streets.
A stone plaqe written in an arc ane language
with unfading red on a golden background.
Haven't you seen?
You brought with yourself from Kurigram
in your blue suitcase a pounding wave
of the raging Dharala, some fragrant leaves,
and Shyamal's photograph.
It isn't easy to make new friends.
And you didn't know that
in their own suitcases were preserved,
the motions of some other river ,
some other Shayamal's photograph.
Fragrant leaves breed everywhere.
Silvery-green of the Akonda shrub is universal .
You didn't know that ,
you still didn't know.
And so you drifted alone,
till alonness become your friend.
Sometimes in your sleep
all those letters
wafted into your dreams in the darkness.
In awakening , memory didn't srve.
And then there were so many nights
without dreams.
And then the legend returned suddenly one night,
on the roads , street corners,
on stone plaqes.
The silvery throw up of virility
in the cat-house bed
after a drunken evening with friends.
A whole night with Joyce.
Dublin and Dhaka disappearing seamless into each other.
Then into the cubicle on the varendah.
Meeting each other again in the afternoon,
Black coffee,
exchanging flowers, Cigarette destroys
appetite religiously. Sleep comes
like slice of death.
Awaking some nights in the poles of sleep
the same stone plaqe.
Brother sells ancestral homestead saying,
" Who'll live in the village, pissed off with the backwoods life,"
Cabinet Ministers swear-in with resonant voices
In cavernous halls to serve the motherland.
"Our children of golden Bengal
shall float forever in the ocean of plenty."
Friends leave for London never to return again.
Smart ties,sharp creases, revolutionary groups,
You are a dead-ringer foe Picasso's
three- eyed youth on the street.
You walk on ,
hoarding the smell of that house in Purana Poltan.
The flaming need to cruise,
with the pincers of your teeth
you try to tear off the lips,
but she only writes letters,
only words enthrall her.
The pages of the dailies are bogged down
by press statements,
insomnia steals so many nights away ,
suddenly the stone plaqe pierces
through the dark.
Therefore beer cans fly high .
Books turn into a wise Penguin.
In the lonely church, T.S. Kneels down to pray alone.
and the pages of the Calcutta quarterly spills over
with Fleur De Mal.
You watch the ravages of fire
swallow the sylvan technicolor.
The birth-pangs of words
and yet never heard anywhere.
Shaymal's sister kills herself.
Applause, applause rings in the emptiness.
Meher laughs and whoops.
Ablind astronaut orbits the earth.
The U.N.rouses itself with words
at th midnight zero hour.
The young man in Bengal sleeps
at that moment, the poet sleeps,
the mother sleeps, with drowsy eyes
sleep drifts away over the lapping
waters of the lake Ramsagar.
The fishes of Padma sleep away,
the breasts of young lasses want
to turn into a full moon in sleep,
a full harvest sways its head.
Legends and icons drown in booze.
My people weep in October.
Suddenly the oven turncold untimely.
You enter into the enchanted body
of dreams,
flying off with moon touched hair
into the castle of magic tobacco.
You drift into sleep, youn ever know ever,
the gilded words on the stone.
You will wake in the morning ,
drink black coffee and sweep away
to an0other hang-out. The one whom you know,
everyday he comes over and says,
"Hey I wrote a poem today"
he seems exactly like a lost bull,
who walks the pasture the whole day,
and comes to stand here,
with his horn touching the cumulous cllouds.
With milk white voice someone closes down
the neon lights, takes the world away, and the tables grow large
in size.His face grows larger and larger
till they take the shape of life itself.
Not here , not here, somewhere else
sings every song, in the air in the wind.
Sandalwood burns somewhere.
Then you shall get yp and leave
leaving back absent mindedly your cigarette pack.
Khaled will come looking:"Is Shukumar there?
Or Sanjib Datta?""I don't know. Never saw them "
Come on ,let us play the game of existance
with pure scheme of numbers.
Some people move on the streets,
laugh wildly in the dark.
Stand9ing under the crumbled Arch,
Shaheed says,"Mother passed away today."
"Can you pay your bills, today, Sir?"
The demon's child stretches his hand
like a ghost standing on the street,
Shamsur Rahman will turn his head
and look back once.
Then raising a fine dust with his blue hooves,
walk away into the city of moon.
Carnivores, carnivores.
Number by number,
all shall depart. Only you,
struck by ethereal lighting shall
keep on standing tired, gone.
On the baby blue hills of your mind:
You should there everyday.
At the corner of the Beauty restaurant,
Gabinda's footwolk, the wet pavements
of Casbah,blue mountains, weeping walls,
Vietnam, Moulin Rouge, ancient Egyptian ships,
always and everywhereyour petrified voyage:
In the wingless venture,
of death, love and rebellion.
When at midnight cars come to a halt,
machines takes a spell of rest,
poets go home and man lie down
When the paws of anxiety slash down
to tear and rip away in a flash,
and the highway of stars widen deep,
then, then, descends into the street
and shuffles in great fun, burnt
butt ends of cigarettes.
The ash of home drifts and swishes
in the air, and Father's pleasant
face stares from a large bill board.
The wind plays the fute with the skull holes of
Kohima's leopard, the flag falls down.
"O stranger, Tell them that we
too shed blood for you."
"Peace", father would say,"All live together
always in harmony".
Mother's letters arrive
Shibtosh has gone away to Chinsurah,
leaving back his slain brother under Narindah's bridge.
His heart howls with the smell
of flowers near the corner of Lakhmibazar.
Sometimes in the stricken night
one can hear his determined footsteps
here and there. Catatonics return
to life and with whooping delight
take a lease of the city. They scream,
"Yes Siree, men were here now and now
they are all gone. Where have they all gone?
What witchcraft took them away?"
Hearing all the lines you rushed
off to that house in Paltan.
Standing near the wall you watched,
the silhoutte of the woman you loved,
making patterns on the window.and then you left,
and then you came back.
Stood forlorn near the stadium,
then you went off looking for Qaiyuma at Malibag.
His unfinished paintings gave you sanctuary.
You toss and roll endlessly like the bent
half-empty tubes of paint
And words no longer arrive easy.
Voicas dive deep looking for
the perfect word, without rest,
silence become the concluding line.
"If I only could with brush and paints."
Suddenly the roof coms alive
with the footsteps of summerrain,
as the drums break out when they drown,
the idols in the river at ritual time .
The clouds sing with a generous voice,
throughout the night they sing on.
The sun walk with a fresh face
as if nothing happened last night.
Houses smile wearing paper caps,
birds fly like silver spoons
let loose from a wizard's wand.
Woman brush their hair in the soft sun.
Keys click open locks, egg yolks on float
like the twin breast of Radha,Radha in Jamuna,
trains reach theold Fulbari station,
swirling, twirlinghappy street sweepers,
clean the municipal roads, You're on the road,
holding the fingers of mornig tightly,
you are back again into the street.
Reading shop names and billboards,
you walk in the indolent sun,
carrying in the shirt sleeves,
the wet smell of leaves and barks.
Will you follow this girl wearing dark glasses,
a pair of swans frolic inside her blue trousers,
of will you drift the other way,
where the moon faced pregnant woman stands,
in the varendah.
shall you wait and watch her for sometime?
See a bunch of schooll girls come this way
in their school bus
Whom shall you follow, whom shall you discard?
Much better than all this is cigarette,
bread and honey and milk at eight thirty.
Even better is the taste of magical
tobacco. Best is to get mentioned
in a long drawn out review of recent writings,
penned by a friend without writing,
anything anything at all.
I haven't written anything for long
The gilded word return some night
in certain dreams. The angry tiger doesn't
come back in the dark for long.
Everything so easy it seems sometimes,
just waiting to be read if only Icared.
And this too is true that,
the words turn into some indecipherable
language suddenly, no longer bothers
to be friendly.
Iwant to forget
but stubborn fate wants to remember all.
At shop bars,cinema halls, footpaths,
aeroplanes,glasses of wine, embrace of whore,
wherever I look I see the piece of stone,
regal erect,bejweled near my head,
haunting and chasing me everyday.
And so I capturing the shivery chill
in my spine have criss-crossed the city,
a berserk truck.
Touching dreams and hallucinations,
Ihave measured the moments
without end sitting at the church of pisa.
Nights ran awaay with women and wine,
days steal by the car naps .
Dhaka comes together with Dublin.
Ihave flown on the vast wings
of albatross to Purana Paltan
and s uddenly seeinga horse-shoe lying
on the street I broke up inside,
missing my poems the whole day.
"You are sad today."Poets could once
be recognized by their long hair locks
and their tuberculor hearts.
Nobody dies nowadays from that dreaded disease
and the bold patekeeps growing llike
a nuclear crater."My impendingb aldness
saddens me"."Hey! you are a real kidder."
Indefeat darkness and despaire,
my laughter saves me.
"Ishall foot to the habitations,
Musium, funeral pyres, love,
revolution---will you take me with you.
You said you would.""Idon't even know you."
Idon't believe that the bones of Fla
come together, return back to life.
That thehapiness of home is reform,
that too is beyond my hope.
I don't build new castles with old stones,
I only watch Rome and Hamadan burning,
burning away in infernal flames,
but I don't get to see human habitations
swelling large with man and life.
I see the sword lying in the wind,
the emminent doom,the wasting away of all.
The mirroris encrusted with molten lava,
the murals on the walls are wiped off.
The whistle is blown everytime
and watch the end game
to the left and right of my golden Bengal
I havn't written poems for long.
I rellish joints regularly, breaking
the sequences of time with smoke
and tobacco. In consequence no time is left.
Everything seems watr tranced.
Cold quite water, only water, only water.
Anxiety props up like th sky with thousand pillars,
locust swarm of stars devour the eyes.
Still i shall court poetry
In summer's cold night.in desperate rains
and confusion of spring,
I shall walk the city forever
without fatigue, holding the flickering lamp of words.
I shall embrace death again and again
Ishall embrace life. Birthdays shall turn into
anniversaries of mourning,
A dead tiger devours no man.
So the dead poet is honoured,
and the poet alive does time in jail.
Again I shall loss the one I love,
brother shall sell the homestead,
I shall become a tobacco serf,
shall troop off to the whore's bridal night .
white man shal buy out the nation,
I will again watch the mysterious chemistry
of the eternal fluid, worms shall stand at the street corner
thunder struck, musterbate at night wildly with a porno pix,
Parimal Shibtosh shall go away,
train will whistle at midnight,
a youth shall stand on the road
with a cigarette between his shattered lips ,
ex-revolutionaries will take up cushy jobs,
Bengal shall lose her wealth once more,
a rebel star shall shine again in the sky,
teen age breasts shall grow large,
the soft smell of flowers shall drive away
sleep in Chinsurah, the wind will play a flute
through the openings of someones skull,
the bridge shall be ripped off into the sky ,
I shall not write for long,
and then I shall rise again in a fiery summer,
as an island in Padma's down stream.
Carrying the soul of the swift current
in my curls, Ishall walk into
the sea of memories.
In every birth and rebirth
Ishall return, a poet, to Bengal.
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