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Bordering PoetryAN ANTHOLOGY OF TRANSLATED POETRY FROM BARAK VALLEY

ARJUN CHOUDHURI

VICKY PUBLIS HERS

4th Floor, Saraswati Apartment, Chilarainagar Path,Opp : ICICI Bank, Bhangagar, Guwahati-5Tele Fax : 0361 2451586, Mobile : 9435010632, 9954140044



Bordering Poetry

AN ANTHOLOGY OF TRANSLATED POETRY FROM BARAK VALLEY by

Arjun Choudhuri

Published by

Vicky Publishers

4th Floor, Saraswati Appartment, Chilarainagar Path, Bhangagarh,

Guwahati-5, Tele Fax : 03612451586,

Mobile : 9435010632, 9954140044

First Published in 2010, Guwahati

© Poet

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or

translated in any manner, by any media whatsoever, without written

permission, except in the case of brief quotations for critical articles or reviews. Please address all enquiries to the publishers.

Cover : Abcd

Price : 00/-

DEDICATION

All that has changed

and all that has not.

we revere and we hate.

Barak,

wildest, capricious Borobokro,

beloved mate

of unsung days,

we narrate youISBN 978-93-80382-22-7



“All changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.”

William Butler Yeats, East er 19 16

Special Thanksto

Amaresh Roy, Pintu Gupta, Prasun Barman, Basab Roy,

Malek Ali, Nayanjyoti Sarmah

&

Saumen Bharatiya



COMPILATION AND PROLEGOMENA BY AMITABHA DEV

CHOUDHURY

TRANSLATIONS WITH TRANSLATOR’S FOREWORD BY ARJUN

CHOUDHURI

______________________________________________________________________________

The translations in the present volume have been produced with the

necessary consent of the original authors, or their successors. The

translator attaches no claim whatsoever to the original texts but asserts

his intellectual rights over the translation attempts / translated texts

reproduced herein. The rights of the original authors over their respective

poems remain uncon tested.

No part of thi s publica tion may be reproduced anywhere in any medium,

electronic, digital or print without the express permission of the translator

or the publishers. In case of research oriented publications, proper

acknowledgements, citations and references to the text must be u sed.

Parts of the translated poetry from this volume have b een used as archival

material at the website www.unishemay.org

PROLEGOMENA wAmitabha Dev Choudhury 6w TRANSLATOR’S

FOREWORDw Arjun Choudhuri 11w ASHOKBIJOY RAHAw THE NAGA

QUEEN 13w NIGHT ON A HILL (DOLOO) MOON LIGHT 15 wSTORM 16w

DEBENDRA KUMAR PAUL CHOUDHURYwHAFLONG HILL 17 wTHE

LEAFY CREEPER 19 w WONDROUS ASHAADH 20 wSUDHIR SEN

wTHE RIHANG DANCE 21w IN A WORLD OF BIRDS 22 w LOVE 23

wANURUPA BISWAS wTHE SWAN AND THE BELOVED LAKE 24 wTHE

NIGHT FAIRY 25 w19TH MAY, 1985. 26 wSHAKTIPADA BRAHMACHARI

wTHE NINETEENTH OF MAY, 1961, SILCHAR 27 wTHE DIARY OF THE

DISPOSSESSED 28 wMY MOTHER COULD HAVE SAID THUS 29 wBIMAL

CHOUDHURY wSTORIES 30w BENEATH BARAK BRIDGE I STOOD 31w

MY BIRTH 32 w KARUNASINDHU DEY wO BOATSMAN, O SAVIOUR 33

wBECAUSE IT IS TIME 34 wTHE TWO CLAIMANTS 35wUDAYAN GHOSH

wSILCHAR 1990, A NIGHT WRIT IN BURNT LETTERS 36 wTHE RAILWAY

TRACKS ON THE MOUNTAINS 37 wCRUSADES 38 wRUCHIRA SHYAM

wBARRIERS 39 wTO CONCLUDE 40 wTHE EMPTY ROOM 41 w

BRAJENDRA KUMAR SINGHA wTHE TWENTY-FIFTH OF BAISHAKH 42

wHISTORY 43 wON THE DISSEMINATION OF LEARNING 44wBIJIT

KUMAR BHATTACHARJYA w THE PEOPLE OF BARAK LIVE THUS45w

THE FLOODS ON THE TWISTING LAGOONS 46 w 2. 47 w SHANTANU

GHOSH w 1. 48 w COMPOSITION 117. 49 w COMPOSITION 1 50

wMONOTOSH CHAKRAVARTY w TO LALDENGA 51 w SUNRISE AT

CONTENTS



BHUBAN HILL 52w THE MIRROR 53 w RANAJIT DASwTHE TREAD OF

DEATH 54 wBEAUTIFUL BENGAL 56 wA POSTCARD FOR MY PATERNAL

GRANDFATHER 57 w DILIPKANTI LASHKAR w LOCATINGS 58 wTHE

MOTHER TONGUE 59 w THE LEGITIMATE LANDS – ASSAM 60 w

TAPODHIR BHATTACHARJYA w OF THE INCREATE WATERS 61 w

GODDESS 62w 9TH JULY, 2003 63 w TIRTHANKAR DAS PURAKAYASTHA

w EASTERN CLOUDS 64 w RITES FOR PASSAGE INTO THE VOID 65w

FOR MY DAUGHTER 66 w DEBASHISH TARAFDAR w THE LAY OF

ASHVIN – 2 67w

OUR HOUSE 68w

OF NATION (AN EXCERPT) 69w

SHANKARJYOTI DEB w THE GREAT DEPARTURE 71 w SONAPUR, 2001

72w SHILLONG 11 73 w AMITABHA DEV CHOUDHURY w THE BARAK

VALLEY EXPRESS 74 w THE REASON WHY I WRITE 75w OF ALL THAT IS

STALE 76 w ANITA DAS TANDON wACROSS BOUNDARIES OF 77w THE

NOWAAI BIRD 78 w THE MUTED LANGUAGE 79 wSWARNALI BISWAS

BHATTACHARJYA w THAKURMA’S REPERTORY w 1. THE STORY OF

LOTUS-RED AND LOTUS-BLUE 80 w 2. THE STORY OF SIMPLE-

DIMPLEHEAD 82 w 3. THE TALE OF SUN-BOY WATER-BOY AND

RADIANT-LASS 84 w SAPTARSHI BISWAS wTHE WAITING ROOM 85

wO POET, O DEPARTED POET 86 w MY HAY HUT 87 w SHELLY DAS

CHOUDHURY w KHUKU’S LIBRARY AND 88 w I ABOUT KHUKU 89 w

KAVYASHREE BAKSHI BHATTACHARJYAwTHAT DEMENTED GIRL 90

prolegomena

BENGALI POETRY IN BARAK VALLEY:A NON-POLITICAL MANIFESTO

Amitabha Dev Choudhury

We are - we were - we shall be – in the meadows and the riverbanks, in

the crowd and the busy marketplaces - in the lore that the people revere and

in the solitude of nature’s bounty – we have been – in unsung self-immersion,

in the passing of the rural countryside and in the ushering in of the city-

town life that so loudly proclaims its garish garb – we have been – in the

sliver of a pathway that meanders between the sky-high mountains and the

fathomless crevices on the Shillong-Guwahati hill-route and in the tunnel-

infested hill-section of the Cachar Express and the resounding rail tracks of the Barak Express – in the airport at Kumbhirgram where busy couriers

would import important information fresh from the far-off city of Kolkata –

we have been – in the rattling thrumming melody of the rain on corrugated

iron roofs – in the beautifully sharp teeth of the gathering, impoverished,

familial rat – we have been – in the suns that be and the suns that are, in the

flood of light and in the ghastly eerie mystifying light of that phantasm with

a magic lantern whom we mortally call the moon – this valley where we are,

that bears within it many creeds, many languages, many colours, many a

sunbeam and many a rain shower, is primarily Bengali in character and

culture.

The name of our language is Bengali, Bang la. The name of our heart is

Bengali. The name of our dreams is also Bengali. Our forefathers too were

born in this land, here or there. Our chief river is named Barak, and its

archaic name is Borobokro – a river with so many twists and turns and

bends can rarely be found. Like that our river, our personal history also has

a number of twists and bends, many a cyclone, many a flood, many a

wetland and so many layers of shifting silt. We had once been an extended

part of the Surma Valley (the Sylhet-Cachar region of undivided India) named

9bordering poetry



1110 bordering poetrybordering poetry

after the river Surmah which then again is a tributary of our river Barak. The

three districts that comprise the region today – Cachar, Hailakandi and

Karimganj – of these Karimganj itself had been a part of Sylhet till as late as

1947. Yes, we had been a peaceful, free people till then, under the unfurled pennant of the Dimasa ‘tribe’ of the valley (as contemporary parlance would

have it). In spite of not being Bengalis, the Dimasa kings adopted Bangla,

Bengali with all sincerity. A court poet of those kings, Bhubanesvar

Vacaspati translated the treatise, Shree Naradi Rasamrta, which remains a

milestone in the medieval history of the poetic practices in our region.

Some Dimasa rulers themselves wrote poetry in Bengali. Considering the

calendar’s passage, when what we know as the modern age had already

appeared over the horizon in greater Bengal, our region, ever shadowed by

the cloak of despair and owing to the inadequate distribution of the elements

of civilisation, had still been in the throes of the medieval age. Not that it

was anything bad, it was definitely well. Because then it had been the hour

when the ‘Bhakti’ era was at its zenith. The enthusiasm of the Dimasa kingshad not been merely due to political motivation. In their time, some of the

Dimasa Burman rulers had composed paeans to the Divine Mother or had

written Vaisnavite poetry. The incisive assessment of time might have seen

those attempts at composition as distinctly pre-modern, as samples of

outdated work lagging much behind contemporary trends. But consider

this – does any age in this land ever truly end? Foucault might just be

irrelevant in this context of our land. Do we not yet, knowingly or

unknowingly, in the better sense of the term or for the worse, sustain our

medieval-ness in our living, practices or cultural paradigms? Our history as

well, devoid of any epochal signification, has continued its journey through

the morasses of selfishness and humanism.

Our Dimasa king once composed a hymn to the Divine Mother which

has a line that runs thus: On all sides crowds in this dense forest, Mother/

your div ine name here rises in the midst. The dense forest crowding in on

all sides in these lines must never have struck a note in the heart of

Halishahar’s devout hermit-bard. Simply because the geographics and

circumstances he lived in had not been infested with forests. But we

definitely are surrounded on all sides by forest and hill. In the midst of

these, when we fashion the idol of our familiar poetry-goddess, meditating

closely, imagining that beauty, toiling incessantly and crafting endlessly,

we may just glimpse in that mystifying smile p laying about her lips the smile

that can be tribal, Assamese or Manipuri in nature and origin. It is here thatwe are different from the mainstream of the Bengali race, in spite of the fact

that we are Bengalis ourselves.

Our histories are different from yours. Our dreams are different from

yours. Our songs are different form yours. Our geography is different from

yours. Our nightmares are different from yours. Our languages are different

from yours. Our poetry is also that, different from yours.

Different it is, there is no doubt about that. But the legacy of the

Caryapada lyrics is as much a part of the blood that flows in our veins as

it is with you. The Shree Krishnakirtana, the Mangalkav yas, Ramprasad,

Bankimchandra are as much ours as they are yours. Rabindranath-

Jibanananda are the two names of our divine vision. Saratchandra to

Kamalkumar, Manik Bandyopadhyaya down to Yugantar Chakravarty,Bibhutibhushan down to Utpalkumar Basu, Shakti Chattopadhyaya down

to Joy Goswami, and Michael to Gautam Basu – all of them provide us

sustenance. But we have something more than all this. We have Shaktipada

Brahmachari – and do you have that? We have Karunasindhu Dey – do

you have that? We have Birendranath Rakshit – do you have that? We

have Sourav Kumar Chaliha – and Nilimkumar – Sujit Choudhury and

Debashish Tarafdar – do you have them? We would be inanimate bereft of

you, yet whatever we have bey ond yours – that you do not even deign to

have any knowledge about.

It was in 1874 when Sylhet, the heart of the Surma-Barak Valley was

shriven and affixed onto Assam under the pretext of revenue adjustment.

What a cruel trick of fate! Before even a century had passed, in the reciprocal

of that ‘74’ number, in the year 1947 (Reversing the 74 in 1874 gives us the

47 in 1947!), the wheel of our fortunes was reversed. The referendum exiled

Sylhet from Assam, from India itself. And what happened as a result? We

were divided into two parts. Our waters-breezes-suns-rain showers were

partitioned off into this side and that. In our midst arose a new genera tion

whose homesteads had been lost. They had be en reduced to penury. It is




true that Barak Valley was not partitioned but the intense agony that followed

when a part of its body, the Surmah Valley, was sectioned off from it. And

thus this agonised valley became a home for those innumerable

dispossessed, the ‘wretched of the earth’ whose homes had been in theSurmah Valley.

They whose initial knowing had been the rehabilitation camps, their

maturity had gathered in them in the form of their thoughts and ideas, and

had been fostered by time. Our thoughts and ideas they were – stored

away, shored away, ready to burst forth at any moment. If these were left

untold by us, they would never see the light of the day. One of our primary

poets, Shaktipada Brahmachari had translated his memories of adolescence

in East Bengal into wonderful poems towards the fag end of his life –

wasn’t it an intense desire to speak one’s own language to express one’s

own thoughts and ideas that motivate d this action on the part of the poet?

We realised, if we could not express our thoughts to somebody else, some

audience unknown hitherto, we would perish. Even if nobody paid anyheed, we still would speak our inmost words, in powerful roars or silent

dulcet tones, trumpeting-neighing aloud, or in the silvery tones of the river’s

soft passage. Even if nobody listened, it would be silence to which our

speech would be addressed. Therefore, our poetic practices are but a scratch

on the bosom of silence. Our cries are basically the echoes that resound in

our self.

Nobody listened. No one listens, ever. There had been a time when we

imagined that we would become ‘you’. The sole objective of our ‘I’ was to

become ‘you’. But time marched on, the years passed by and we realised

that the marginalised existence and the struggle for survival that we had

been fated to live with by the utte r hope lessness of independ ence was a

journey that we had to attend to all alone. We realised that this incomplete,

un-honoured and unsupported ‘we’ could never become ’you’. We realised

that it would not do for us to sit back and count on your laurels or your

negligences, which ever you gave us. It is your neglect that we must take

up as our weapon. For actually it is so, it is you who stand to lose if we are

not kept at your side. Whether you accept it or not, we shall grow definitely,

like that denigrated Other.

We had flamed up in outrage once, in the year 1961, when an alien

tongue had extended the tentacles of its hegemonic influence onto our

mother tongue, when the government itself had made it compulsory for that

language to be thrust forcibly upon us. From then on, we have been yetmore Bengali. From then on we have turned one of our faces toward our

own homestead. From then on we have two faces , one that is turned outwards

towards the larger world, towards you, towards Kolkata and further still

towards the West and the other that is turned towards our own home, that

being stilled. Shaktipada Brahmachari too, therefore, had had enough of

the ‘Krittivas’ school which he had so emulated in the beginning and had

returned home at the end to a narrative of the self drenched in the waters of

memory and the past. And that face of ours which is turned towards the

outside world, the worthiest reflector of that is Ranajit Das who has the

temerity to expound to the city the narrative of city life, though he himself

had been born in a remotely located, small half-town in this very region.

But we do not have governmental or private patronage; neither do wehave for ourselves any scope of good publishing, nor financing, nor

readership and publicity. Yet we have not stopped writing. Atandra , a

magazine published in the sixties decade of the last century, had been a

conscious effort on our part to tally our literary practices with those of

mainstream Bengali literature. It was then that we had declaimed for the first

time that inertia would never overwhelm us. And before that, among our

poets, it had been Karunasindhu Dey, his bosom adorned first of all with

the ‘garland of the environs’, who had edited our dreams in the belles-

lettres Swapnil . Our Sahi tya has affixed onto it the seal of a

disestablishmentarian existence. Itya di, Kha , Lala nmoncho , Prati srot ,

Krandasi , Ekavali and others are synonyms of that very designing of

dreams and non-inertia.

It is our misfortune that we have not been able to sit down inside our

own house in peace and in calm. And we still keep moving in and out of

international and national boundaries, eyes encountering rehabilitation quite

often. Our intellect, our inherency, our ambitions, our livelihood and our

desires therefore do still meander beneath that Jibanananda-ish Asvathha

tree – our most glorious intellects – our Udayan Ghoshes, our Ruchira



translator’s foreword

Arjun Choudhuri

Quid est veritas?

“What is the truth?” said Pontius Pilate.

The truth lies elsewhere.

So it is with the texts presented in this volume, these poems that are

narratives of a time that is gone, of a time that will be and of a time that is

now. There are borders evident in these poems, borders that bear testimony

to many a rite of passage, borders that are not only geographic in nature

but also psycholo gical and cultural in origin. These borders have been an

essential part in the knowing of the home we have called Barak Valley and

they continue to be so even now. I will not discourse long on this, for

much has been written and said about this unique epiphenomenon of

belonging, especially when it comes to Barak Valley.

I will not defend my translations in the present volume. But I would definitely

seek clarify a few points in context here. I had to read these seventy-odd

poems over and over again in the guise of a reader-writer before I c ould

actually touch them as a translator. Whatever happened after that escapes

my memory right now, and I watch only an ontogeny taking place in the

immediate past. Translation is an art, definitely and there are theories of

reception and production that govern it. But I beg to differ with those who

would consider a translation to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’. No translated text can

be either good or bad. On e could c onsid er using the words ‘adequate’ or

‘inadequate’ in this case. About the present anthology, I consider myself

to be answerable for this inadequacy or adequacy, as the ca se may be. For

apart from the inter-semiotic transference/ transmission that occurs in anact of translation (technically speaking – the communication between the

‘target language’ and the ‘source language’), there is the production,

institution and stabilisation of a third space that remains liminal, and just

that. This liminality focuses on impossibility, possibility, sense, knowing

and reception-transmission dynamics to produce itself as a distinct ‘space’

and it is in this space that the bordering of the text in direct encounter with


Shyams, our Ranajit Dases, our Tirthankar Das Purakayasthas, our Saptarshi

Biswases, our Debashish Tarafdars, our Swarnali Biswas Bhattacharjyas -

they leave this valley and go far away. And the emptiness that results from

their departures is crammed in hastily by people of lesser intelligence or bynon-poets.

Yet we are, we were and we shall be. We shall awake once more from the

ashes of the past, from the dust, from the pyre, from the hearth and from the

silt that the yearly floods leave behind. And you shall see, one day we shall

besiege the centre’s poetry wi th the poetry from these borderings, t hese

peripheries. A day will come when the domain of Bengali poetry shall be

forced to admit to be ruled by the poetry from these margins.

And in this hope, our poetry shall live on, with fire and agony.



the pre-existing language begins and continues. The same has happened

in this case with BORDERING POETRY. These are new texts, not just

becau se these have been re-compose d in an alien (though not so al ien)

tongue, so I affirm. These are new texts because their intercourse with thereader’s psyche begins anew. BORDERING POETRY just happened as ‘a

way of happening/ a mouth’. Let us hope that it will serve its purpose well.

I am grateful to Amitabha Dev Choudhury for providing the prolegomena

for the book as well as for the fac t that it was with him that the germ of this

idea began its growth. It was again he who provided the compilation at

hand many outlets and sources, of acceptance and rejection, of knowing

and growing which ultimately led to the production of this volume. I am

also grateful to all the poets whose works have been published here in

translation for their consent. Their rights to their intellectual property remain

inviolate. I am obligated also to Soumen Bharatiya for the present genesis.

Apart from that, there are friends to whom I owe my thanks, but who would

rather see me bound and gagged hand and foot befo re they would accept

any gratitude from me. To you, Shoubhonik, Goirick, Nilaksho, Ishan, Jean,

Kristian and Michael.

Last but not the least though, I remain grateful to Dr. Dipankar Purakayastha

for earnest discourses in a house from the past, about the homes of the

present. His words about trans ferenc e and transl ation hav e never been in

vain, from Wordsworth’s Prelude in on the university campus down till

now when he often speaks about Tagore. Thank you for signatures in

time, sir.

Let there be lightBut here there is no light.

Let there be no more wild rivers

but here there is only tha t, a river

and nothing more but that, a river

ASHOKBIJ OY RAHA

THE NAGA QUEEN

After dinner last evening at Deshmukh’s bungalow,

I returned quite late.

He is writing a treatise on hill tribes, a worthy man he is.

He read out a chapter from the book – “The Nagas’ Dance”.

Deshmukh’s eyes suddenly glow with a strange light‘The Nagas indeed are a warlike race.

I will show you a wondrous relic tonight,

my most treasured collectible, only do not

let anybody know about it.’

Speaking thus, the man exits the room

with the speed of a typhoon.

And soon again he appears,

a wild, unknown light sparkling in his eyes,

What was that in his hand? A wig?

Deshmukh smiles a mysterious smile –

‘That is the hair-relic of a great Naga queen,

a young Amazon she had been, a Naga Joan of Arc.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century,

she would be seen often, astride a white steed,

at the head of a band of warriors.

In eighteen battles she won her victor’s laurels

but laid down her life in the last.’




I listen, awestruck – and gaze in wonder –

On the point of a bamboo-filigreed chonng ,

the reddish hair skilfully was hooked.

Seen from afar, it looked as if the hair

descended naturally from the chonng , as if

it was a cascade from a living head.

I touch it – soft, silky hair it was

but so ver y cold to th e touch.

I clasp the hair in my fist and sit there

with my eyes closed and for quite long.

I want to feel the soft throb of the Naga queen’s yo ung heart

I see the vision of the Naga hills –

a white steed flashing by – with Joan of Arc.

NIGHT ON A HILL (DOLOO)

MOONLIGHT

I waken suddenly in the deepest night.

Stony skies and the moon’s gold light.

Crystalline waves on the lake’s eye dance.

Someone carved them by sheer chance.

Silvery fish leap out suddenly there.

Sapphire trees rise afar, and here.

The ghat in red and emerald is dressed,

with a hundred and eight rising steps.




STORM

The black cloud-serpent rises suddenly in the skies,

with upraised hood; it hisses, snarls and amok flies.

The moon dies out – the mountains fade away

afar resounds aloud the demon’s horrible bray.

A little later that storm arrives, with rains,

gnashing, gritting jaws and iron chains.

The hill raises its trunk suddenly to the skies

and like some fiery beast the lake emits cries.

DEBENDRA KUMAR PAUL CHOUDHURY

HAFLONG HILL

While on the train, I have often heard

the call of Haflong Hill –

not a free moment I had to spare then

to be a gues t there at Haflong Hill.

I have heard it call me – days growinto months, months become years.

So many waves have passed slow

overhead – I have forgotten now

how Haflong Hill had spoken to my heart.

In this monsoon evening’s light

we meet at last in this daak-bungalow , tonight.

I hear you are one of the hill-folk

and yet you are not one of these hills.

Gently, passionate, yet so very slow,

your body like a wave does softly rock.

Your bosom heaves, its peaks draped

in a lately fashionable green-hued saree

from Bombay mills – its veil waving

in the breezes. A procession of clouds

descend down the sides of Haflong Hill.

Nobody else is here tonig ht, in th is house.




You and I – alone we are tonight

in this daak-bungalow . The others

are far off, busy, complacent even,

with their typically jaded discourses.

Let us sit then – side by side,

Look at that, how the metal pin,

shining, bright, polished, forces

the skies into the darkly evening.

Sleep-heavy, the lamp posts doze,

tonight we shall bide at this house.

Tomorrow, we shall say our farewell.

The mind loses its steadfastness and

memory sings its subtle song.

Only this much be our reminiscence,

how this night came with hospitality

granted to us by Haflong Hill.

THE LEAFY CREEPER

As a gentle child wrapped in a singlet would run up to me,

I see it, one-legged, standing firm beside my cottage,

that leafy, dense creeper.

On the eternal journey of time, one slit in the fabric of mystery

gave birth to this leafy creeper – once on the go, it has stilled

its roots with love for the earth.

Now, around it surges the immense scope for powerful oblivion .

It hungrily laps up the sweet milk of the earth’s rising breast

with its manifold tongues, its roots sca ttered everywhere.

Its foliage waves in the bluest skies, in the dream of sunlight,

clapping like so many hands, at the rising high above it,

this leafy, dense creeper.




WONDROUS ASHAADH

In these collyrium-hued clouds of Ashaadh,

I quest for that unseen magic that plays on,

ever dark bodied, pristine. I creep alone

in these woods therefore, wooing

these dark clouds in sentient love.

In Ashaadh blooms the Kadamba flower,

the Ju thi ka and so many others.

I quest for the one whose fragranceclouds my senses and beckons to me.

I see the one for whom I ques t,

in my mind’s eye, the easy breezes

wafting to me that soft fragrance.

SUDHIR SEN

THE RIHANG DANCE

Her hair was not shaded b y the nightly darkness of ancient Vidisha.

Her face was not carved in the likeness of Sravasti’s sculptures.

Yet she entered the floodlit stage and readied herself

slowly undulating in the motions of her dance.

A striped, bright saree draped her limbs

like some snake, as if she had arrived from afar,

crossing the wild wastes of the Tripura forests.

A half-filled bottle of water balanced on her head, she stood.

And a tin lamp too, cleverly perched on the rim of the bottle’s neck.

Her hands held two plates one in each, twirling and whirling at ease,

not at all encumbered by the possibility of failure, or a fall.

She lifted herself and placed her feet on the rim of a brass pot.

There she stood, transfixed like some idol, a leg outstretched behind,like a longish tail, hands on each side spread like some bird in flight.

The twin plates in each hand kept whirling.

She was that and this too –

a young maiden whose name was not known to me.




IN A WORLD OF BIRDS

The neighbourhood cockerel’s crowing stirs my restive sleep.

Crows shuffle on the roof above - a thudding, cawing discourse.

I stretch my limbs and rise to the smiles of the olive-tinted dawn.

Draped in a wrap of dew, someone plays a vivid seven-hued note.

The minstrel dances in the yard, a pair of dahuks chase grasshoppers,

a triad of parrots merge with the mango leaves cackling to themselves,

the chirping sparrows, the troubadour doyels and other birds unknown,

the shaliks fly and perch all around while the crows and drongos

engage in a noisy brawl on one side of the c ourtyard, all apart.

The kingfisher perches silent on the dead branch shading the pond,

on the banks walk the cranes, the falcon flies high on the othe r side

of the clouds, the cooing pigeons roost in the luxury of the terrace,- the entire morning passes thus, revelling in a world of birds.

Though near, they do not know the complexities of the world of men.

With images and symbols they build shelters, though someone often

aims a disturbing stone at the nest.

LOVE

The coupling bodies carved on the walls of Konarak – Let us go and see – the beauteous ocean there.

Walking towards the kitchen, you stopped and left

only a single word for me: No.

Then let us go this time to the blue peaks of Nilaachal

and quest for some lost horizon there.

stirring the sugar silently into my teacup, you smiled

a hint of a smile and said: No.

The Kojagori night smiles, let us go then to the solitary terrace

and sit there, and read the epistles of the starry skies.

Eyes downward, your hand resting on an incomplete woollen,

you uttered in a soft tone: No.

Of late, once, I returned home and casting as ide

my lonesome exile, I said: You are a stranger, too!

Lifting your eyes filled with the mystery of the stars,

the seas and the skies, you replied with that astounding ‘No’.




ANURUPA BISWAS

THE SWAN AND THE BELOVED LAKE

The swan will no longer come to the waters

of the lake, its shuffling feet in wading motions

will no longer bob from shore to sho re, its breast

will no longer touch the streaming current.

The lake is guarded by the excesses of time

Last night saw a tumult occur here, on this shore

The wet clay helplessly now wipes its eyes.

Love’s lonely lake –

And there yet remains a relic or two,

scraggly feathers, white, torn, bloodiedand a few tufts of soft breast down.

The anklets tinkling with wounded pride

that some young girl had clasped onto those feet

have sunk to the depths of the lake.

THE NIGHT FAIRY

The night-fairy slumbers in a dense bamboo grove

What words these are that resound across these leaves?

Down below cascades a spring across the slope

with a soft murmur, its sweet nothings drawing shivers.

Daylight to this grove barely comes, the nightly sky

peeks throu gh the s light o penings in the dense foliage

like some filigreed fence full of regular holes. This night

breeds a mystic mesmer that suggests something more.

The trance that this darkling nightly hour delivers

beckons, calls out from afar with a secretive s ign.

Why does the woman become a fairy in this hour?

The restless peahen dances amidst the veils of the mind.

The clear moonlight showers all around in a silvery colour.

The bodies of memory undulate like those fragrant fumes.

In some far off dark grotto walks the restive musk deer,

the night-fairy’s desires are filled with a deep melancholy.




19TH MAY, 1985.

Much have I gained from you,

and yet I know there is more to be gained.The spotless sky and the loud guffaws of laughter unbarred,

a pledge as it were to discover where the source of bliss lies.

Everything is gone awry, ahead stretches the rolling sandy shores,

a caravan of camels, ships of the desert, the thorns of the date-palms,

a popular legend is all that I see.

SHAKTIPADA BRAHMACHARI

THE NINETEENTH OF MAY, 1961, SILCHAR

Those ten brothers each a Champak blossom,

one sister they had, a beautiful Parul bloom;

they tore out their hearts and wrote o n the skies

‘This, the Ishan quarter, laughs, weeps, cries -

what is that tongue, hark, listen with care!’

Here, you will discover, if you have not heard it,

all the crimes those vile machinators have writ –

Listen to how thirty hundred thousand hearts thunder –

‘ Bang la is my mother-tongue, Ishan-Bangla my mother.’




THE DIARY OF THE DISPOSSESSED

He who has seized my home has seized also my fears,

the sky’s vault above me the imprint of my name bears.

Now will I wage war against all violence without error,

for I have been gifted a tambul by a mekhla clad sister.

In a university great that of languages knows nothing,

I have now been endowed with only love’s sc hooling.

Bangla is my mother-tongue; the world is my shelter,

Prafulla and Bhrigu each for me is a clan-brother.

MY MOTHER COULD HAVE SAID THUS

All that balderdash that you write, what’s the use of it,

I do not understand, I often see you chewing the pen’s end,

muttering silently all to yourself, there is sound all around,

all pervasive, omnipotent, a network intricate of sounds there

and here and everywhere, meaningless sentences these,

one day, the Sound will gobble you up sudd enly.

Buttons missing from your shirt, uncombed hair all awry,

why do you have to stare at the sky listlessly and trip

all over the place everyday – you have read a lot, yet

you could not become the senior Babu of some office.

They had called you to a post in Haridaspur, but you,

of course, had to turn it down, that lucrative offer.

I do not understand what you want to do, these books,

they have been your doom, last night I heard you mumble

in your sleep, who was it? Do you know even the person

whose moniker it is, this name of the lotus leaf?

That girl who used to come to you every da y, where is she?

Is she married now? A household and a husband, all good,you know it, I presume? May everybody else be well and

may you ever lie awake with calm, bright eyes bathed in light

across the four quarters, silent, sole mn; you would gather up

those grains of mustard scattered all around. I will be there

to bathe your face with the unguent of the milk from my breast.




BIMAL CHOUDHURY

STORIES

A night like a picnic

Deepak, Satish, Rathin

and I

From east to west

and from north to south

stretched the spring breeze

overflowing with the moonlight,

small plants casting long shadows

stand in a row, unmoving,

like so many trees.

With a perfectly rounded face

plastered all over with satiation ,

like it is in Noni Paul’s household,

Reba’di had asked her husband,

‘Then it is I

who will have to be the guinea pig?’

O heart,

let your vessel be filled to the brimwith the ambrosial dregs of memory.

The picnic of the night –

wherever one looks, it is a warmth-less time,

Deepak, Satish, Rathin

and I.

BENEATH BARAK BRIDGE I STOOD

In the evening’s last light

as I stand beneath Barak Bridgeshining above me like a lamp lit

in the honour of the sky, staring ahead

towards the becalmed sandy banks of the river,

you might be shopping, for all I know,

at some decorated shop in the heart of the town,

saying – ‘Six hair clips, please.’

A certain budding actress had onc e told me,

‘The colour white, the song of the birds,

and the fragrance of the Jui bloom,

these are my favourites, indeed.’

These days there always is a furore

and a lot of voices around the tea table.

Ranajit, a strapping young man now,

after scoring many a victory

in his arm-wrestling bouts

was polishing off some cheese payesh .

He was saying, ‘You wouldn’t believe this,

three girls at the least write letters to me,

addressing me as ‘Raja’. I remember,

how a veteran player had once advised me

‘As long as you are on the crease, keep playing hard’

The spring breeze overflows with the tuneless strains

of the drums and the flutes from the wedding-busy houses.Somebody croons in the Kalavati raga,

‘My heart-beloved, you know not the pain of my heart’

A retired political leader had once told me regretfully –

‘I lost in the end; I could not win this battle for my pride’




MY BIRTH

Have it inscribed, the ninth day of the dark fortnight

in the month of Marga sheersha , a calm, unruffled voice,

the hour, the astral conjunction, latitudes, longitudes all.

The pregnant darkness is pierced with a be am of light.

My mother’s hand lies near my head in its respective poise.

Close by the tulasi-altar towards the pomegranate tree’s shade

the womanly tinkle of a melodious ululation all so auspicious

the chilly autumn evening with the aromas of the husked grain

wafting around in the centre of the courtyard with the mats

and all that banter that frames life, exchanging betel, welcomes.

Burnt mustard seeds splitting with a fierce odour and there lies

the room where are born babies forever, loved it is by this

the collyrium-shaded creeper and a pair of antlers from some deer.There are sounds sempiternal that are melodious in their uniqueness.

Those wrapper clad labourers laugh and laugh at all and this even.

There was a glowing moon for everyone’s birth, o mother,

the slight waves on the Talpukur ripple, as do my reminiscences.

KARUNASINDHU DEY

O BOATSMAN, O SAVIOUR

I will go indeed, o helmsman, to your ramshackle skiff

and build therein a home of luxury past compare,

I hear when the sounds of tinkling armlets drift from afar

and the dangling nose ring, and child-like laughter,

as well as the intimate presence of a well-bought wife.

I will go indeed, o helmsman, to the tumble-down sails

of your mast, destroying-building senses, and that swallow

bright-plumed shall alight on the humbling Bakul to sing

its pitiful strains above our heads; a beautiful oblation

with wafting incense smoke and an awesome ambience.

Steady your clasp, vigilant helmsman, on the helm,

for you know not when the traitorous winds and the waves

so treacherous shall conspire together to drown your fates.

Like a shrewd woman, the river raises bouts of poisonon its tongues with the thunder of a thousand clouds;

many a carefully arranged homestead, many a home

is shattered, you, o helmsman, remain witness alone.

O helmsman, save the day.




BECAUSE IT IS TIME

It is time that I must go to the depths, so I shall.

Limbs flying around with the force of the joy

that rushes on and on till the ills of the household

I discard in the raw sunshine and burst them asunder

in the guise of a firework that speeds sparks while I

roll in the dust and the smoke that descends all

around: if then these paths are fled, so what?

I desire to destroy my fates at will, so I shall.

Fiery breaths, breathing flame, my hearts shall I open

to the meanderings of the fire and weld onto it this joy.

But you, longing-love, are fled like a destitute in difficult times.

He whose youth decays slow, he suffers long, he suffers hard,

now it is either gold or the clouds of ash in the crematorium.

Who would try to bind me in the clutches o f their powers?

A pair of hands strong, a curtain of dense hair, no knowing

of right and wrong, they will stand afore, rooted in their courage;I have known at my head how these killer winds can beckon you

to Death’s demesne; for in my veins hisses an immersed serpent.

Because it is time that I must go to the depths, so I shall.

Since I desire to destroy my fates at will, so I shall.

THE TWO CLAIMANTS

They who saw light in the darkness, in the dark prison,

suddenly leapt up in joy to see the coming forth, the roar

of the angered river rushes in their breast, in a long line

of arduous desire, they found their feet on this shore.

For long years, this weakened century’s fallow fields

have lain lone but were pierced by the proud maleness

and hailing eulogies with chaplets and laurels in glory.

A blood-tinged rebellion was born here, a promise,

a legacy of life and living willingly clasped for all time.

In the darkness of the midnight I hesitate, those who had

floated away in the stream as a hun dred lotuses, they flee

in their exiled happiness to the endless sea, cea selessly.An all-swallowing current flows in the veins, in rapt terror

I watch, those two claimants have drunk their fill of blood –

the land has devoured all light,

the dark has devoured the children.




UDAYAN GHOSH

SILCHAR 1990, A NIGHT WRIT IN BURNT LETTERS

When the street lamps light up in Silchar,

I feel that I am quite close to the illumed town.

The night is illumined even more.

Writs, records, documents all burning, the rights

of homes and households burn through the nights

on the fire-altars of the sacred profane-priests;

the fields fertile, the rights of the tilling farmers,all of that burns in the offices of the land officers.

Wrapped in a fake cloak of like ashes appear the holy men.

Their bags conceal the coveted vaastu-snake, heritages dim,

and the revolving wheels of time so wildly triumphant.

THE RAILWAY TRACKS ON THE MOUNTAINS

In the rail station of the hilly bourne of Harangajao,

a man in a blue uniform stands alone, lantern in hand,

in the faded light, beside the stationary railway carriage.

The mountains, the jungles, the bridge, tunnels thirty six,

and the undulating motions of the trainrevive the memory of that lone lantern’s light.

Far away, behind the hills, like the life-long ambiguity

of a confused lover’s love, the taciturn moon sho wers

its pristine, silvery light in silence.




CRUSADES

Growing growling thudding thumping, I cast my flailing at you.

Now let us drum them drumming hard, in the crowded market,

If but there is a time when we should have da nced, then be it so

even without any timely reason. With the soft strains of the sitar,

or within the walls of a darkened, ancient house, there do I cast

your thousand wilful restraints. Twenty-five thousand wise owls

bide there – softly swe lling butts and breasts – where would you

hide away, like the fleeing flowing of the river? Such powers fierce

these are – growing growling thudding thumping growling curtly,

booming barely Bombay drums – twirling stepping dancing madly

shouts near and far – I shall sound them all in the crowded market.

These fellows loll their tongues in greed – many thunders bide here,

all in the wizened tresses of that slut indeed, flowers-leaves-temples

thoroughly-discarded-away-away, I cast again on your bathed body

this the milling crowd, in a sure-sure-sense-knowing-wrongs-done.

The aeroplanes blast these sounds – Vedic statements one or two –

ancient altars here – the sounds blast these rising planes – tottering

old feet, teeth all broken, kicking living – ever solemn elephants too,

creeping over hiding them all growing growling thudding thumping,

laughing gleesome flick that skirt, will you? I cast again – you will too

accept this cacophony silently, waves rising large in the heart roughly.

Flowing lyric-poem you are, the latest entrant in the old man’s ear.

Light you bring sure and twenty-five thousand wise owls bide thereall growing growling thudding thumping loud enough –

I will sound the drum – I will send them bullets – no song but long

knives being sharpened – I have suffered long – I have borne it hard.

Now no more will I endure, now will I resound in those vile ears.

RUCHIRA SHYAM

BARRIERS

I feel guilty when the beggar stretches his palm

whatever I can I throw onto it and try to escape.

Why does this happen, I wonder and wonder

but do no t reach an answer, though I may cra ve.The one blinded from birth has only blindness

to offer – to your vision I bring this knowing,

you being the recipient fitting, in your own prisons –

Where would you flee? The world is not that big.

Wherever you would go, these barriers will exist within.




TO CONCLUDE

My mother, when she left, took away

that last fairytale with her.

On the bed are now scattered a few bel flowers

which have, on the face of it, aged overnight.

The iron key around the neck unlocks no closet.

The emptiness in the white clad room hurts the eye.

Is there no one who could cover up so much light?

THE EMPTY ROOM

There is somebody’s room in my house; it is all locked away,

always, I have never seen them unlock it – I held the key

in my hand often. Sometimes I would wonder to myself

if this is that someone of the locked door, when others

would talk about the matter. I hand over the key to them,

but stra ngely the lock stays in place – the door remains as it is.

The room is stark empty but then, there is a strange cosiness

about it that pleases the hea rt and calls out to me sometimes.

Often, in the midnight, I enter the room and pass my time there.

People say that this used to be the room of the household deity.The homeless ones before us had left with their homeless gods.

Are the gods refugees too? Do they thirst for safe havens as well?

That unknown child whose nickname has been lost in the mists of time

cannot be found easily even though the whole world is searched over.

I guard the room in hope lest that child should suddenly turn up ever




BRAJENDRA KUMAR SINGHA

THE TWENTY-FIFTH OF BAISHAKH

Those reflections have erased themselves

from the surface of the mirror of light.

In a mango grove bereft of heart-song

dies away the strains that were.

On faceless wings flee the days of the guitar

into the heart of the dark recess.

Our words mean little – they have put on the caps

of donkeys and have donned irrelevant garments.

Breathless ads have spread their charm around

in this mart of colour-some popular singings.

Wrapped in gaudy garlands of sheer nonsense,

headless monsters perch on elevated thrones.

Our days, beheaded, silently pass away likewise in the breezes

that flow around in Baishakh’s rainless, mendicant eventides.

HISTORY

The thikadar babu sits in the shade of the Amaltas tree.

That dravida maiden’s hair is dotted with Harappan clouds,

the ruins of the great bathhouse spread about in the heart.

Here, another civilisation grows as the bricks ascend the floors.At day’s end, the babu holds her hand and shows her

how to put the thumb impression on the pay register.

This used to be the babu’s garden retreat,

and his tart, tight bodied like a fresh cauliflower,

her voice like a kokila’s had her day all the time.

The evenings used to resound with jolly crowds

of revellers in the light of the chandeliers.

The babu came in his phaeton, cronies in tow,

with brandy and champagne bottles, chaplets

of fragrant flowers wrapped around his hand,

with diamond earrings for that woman, the tart.

Now, it is al l gone, woman, sounds of the past,

even the house that was here is being demolished.

Maybe this woman had been a courtesan then

of the royal house of Mohenjodaro, maybe

she died of consumption after the floods.

That birth had been a joy-filled one, that life

of hers had been blessed by the hands of the king

when he would adorn her neck himself with gold.

Even the richest dishes, arranged around like flowers,

would not appeal to her taste, she would say –

‘This is not food fit for the palates of human beings’

The dravida maiden knows that flesh is quite cheapnowadays; here evening descends with urinary odours.

Worms and maggots from the gutter creep onto one’s food.

The thikadar babu’s satisfaction must be guaranteed, even

with straining muscles and tired bodies,

or else even that putrid mouthful would not be h ad.




ON THE DISSEMINATION OF LEARNING

Father used to teach me colours as a child

- ‘This is the colour of rice’, he used to say,

this heat will suffice to cook the rice in the pot.

One evening, he smelt some strange odour

and remarked – ‘Hey, that’s the smell of heated rice’

I am grateful to my father, for his words,

which taught me so many a thing

without my having actually seen them

Father used to say – ‘When you eat, imagine

that you are a servant in the house of the babu

and that the food you eat has been granted

to you culled from the leftovers of the kind master.Listen, to imagine the right thing is what is important

what you actually eat is not important at all.’

Father is no more. I bade him farewell on the pyre.

Whatever I learn now is from my peers and friends.

They say ‘Your father was an ancient illiterate fool.

Do not take his words for the truth, do not hesitate

to go upto the ring leader and a sk him, when hungry,

where should you go and destroy posters, or where

you should work to blast bombs during meetings,

or whose head you would hunt, tell him that you

are his to command, that you are his enslaved Alsatian.’

The country’s been free for more than half a century.

There is no dearth of food or shelter anywhere now.

Yet you remain the same fool that your father had been.

BIJ IT KUMAR BHATTACHARJYA

THE PEOPLE OF BARAK LIVE THUS

The girl crossed over, then

the boy, groping, panicky hands,

grasping shoes and bag in a hand

and their lives in the other, c rossed

over to where the BRTF jawans stood

arms outstretched in help and aid.

The tumultuous Lobha flows away beneath,

on the banks have descended landslides,

on both sides of the ruins are ranged cars,

and a few lives, yet with their lives intact,

with shoes and bag in hand,

they have to flee the treacherous ruins,

everything in life is so very important.They leave a car on this side of the s lide,

crossing over to hire another vehicle

on the other side. The people of Barak

live thus for half the year, sometimes

they lie entrapped with no way out of it,

by land, air, tra in tracks or waterways.

Yet, I do wonder, in spite of it all,

how have we managed to stick on

with the rest of the nation?

The girl has crossed, then the boy

steps forward to cross over too – The gurgling Lobha laughs in glee,

its lolling tongues flickering in between

the crevices of the mountains,

that invisible thread of hope,

that rope did indeed help them flee.




THE FLOODS ON THE TWISTING LAGOONS

1.

This sight is pleasing because there are shores here and there too

This sight is pleasing, here love flows in the trees and in flood waters.

On each side gushes those flood waters in the twisting lagoons

and throughout rises the railway track, the sound s of the train

and the gushing waters creates a new world of sounds in itself,

the carriages and the gaps in the flood waters, through the windows

peek the as tonished pa ssengers at the trees stand ing ta ll, neck deep

in the waters, splashing against those tough trunks black, embracing

them.

The waters rise and yet another slice of the railway track disappears

beneath the curt ains of the flood, so will thi s pleasant sight drown itself.This skiff, a part of a long line of anchored ones, that song of the

breakers

will carry me to what new sight, where still surge the breaking waves

against the tough trunks of the trees, in the day-night long dance

rising and falling in the waters of the twisting lagoons.

2.

Now here as I see , the dead, dec ayed body of a ch ild floa ts by –

In this sight, the naked homeless have floated themselves on a skiff.

The village has disappeared beneath the waters, the houses house

only the splashing waters, the thatched roofs raise their arms as if

in appeal for mercy to the skies, the people with their ragged bundles

and a broken pot or two rush about frantically, looking for a camp

where they would be refugees, with rations doled o ut to them

a head each of grain and fuel – these times are when the skiffs

go down often in the twisting lagoons, even those government ones

which bring stores of grain for the hungered refugees , unclothed,

unfed, bereft of shame and honour, whose children have died

in the waters deep, whose livestock and cattle are gone where

they know not – the boats with their rations have gone down,

yet they wait with longing eyes on the verandas of the campsin lines, the electric lights in the camp shine out every night,

there is no black tough tree trunk in this sight, there are

only the rough breakers here, these rush to strike down

and drown, like huge hooded serpents – in the village,

the children and the young maidens have drowned.




SHANTANU GHOSH

1.

From Mohenjodaro to fairytales till Mohenjodaro again,

the mirror never glimpses my hair, nor does the razor

slide across my cheeks, no one would deign to visit me,

in the evenings, such is the melancholy that shrouds my face,

and there will be no time, the clock’s hands will not allow it,

nobody here in this world will have the silence of the clock,

nobody’s will be that silence, nobody’s at all, never.

There had been breezes in the morning, and sunshineand the twirling twisting whirling winds in a procession.

Memories from past lives would form thoughts in the mind,

tales of fairies and kings and dashing princes on winged steeds

would form thoughts in the mind, those memories.

But no fairy comes now, and all fragrances are lost.

COMPOSITION 117

You lie there, vast and motionless, like the ruins

of the Mayan civilisation – wet desire touches

your lips and the sky-waves of the morning

touch your feeling forehead, as you lie silent

like a straight line of pine trees.

Do I not feel your agony?

The seismograph did not foretell

when the earthquake would strike,

is that why you are pained?

Let the tumultuous storm bear away

your picturesque houses, for none did,

is that why you are sad? Or was a stealthy cat

sniffing for custard pudding? Or some cream

kept aside for later? Or was it the song from the radio?

Or is it those love letters

that have been swept away by the breeze?

Do I not feel your agony?

There, twenty-four pages of Tennessee Williamsand you are all awash in agony – very well

let me see then, come darling, come outside

look outside there, no, not a drop of rain,

the steadily dripping tap in the bathroom

ushers in the dawn, those leafy veggies in hand

and now a kerchief from hand to hand, that man

gets it in his hand now, the kerosene lamp

of the rickshaw puller fizzles out suddenly.

See, dearest, how the fish jump from the lake.

Did any of them ever read Tennessee Williams?

There, now, this would be good, a bit more on the side,

darling, there, a bit more – all this luxuriating agonyand Tennessee Williams is good enough on ly after

the twelfth hour of the day, turn on your side,

a bit more, a little bit more, there, your bosom

open to two and a half lengths, like a leafy veggie lies,

now do tell me, dearest, what is your sorrow?




COMPOSITION 1

I am in desperate straits, fear engulfs me,

Silchar’s very identity is gone to the dust,

the rowdy young morning suddenly rises

tearing apart the veils of the dawn’s mist mercilessly.

A bit or two of white hot angst drips – an an gry visage.

I lie awake throughout the morning.

Dear you are, Silchar to the dynamics

of possibility and impossibility, devoid of dreams,

bereft of the very capacity to move at al l –

Only the breezes in my eyes you faintly touch

with a soft veil, I pinch an orange from the fruitseller’s cart

and slyly move away – the next moment, I look for a tremor in the wrinkles of the radiant brow of the Lushai maiden.

I visited Jyoti yesterday – she broug ht me a refreshing spring

from the white fridge, and I wondered to myself as to why

I had remained alive – Jyoti was not mine, no maiden either.

All through this intense day, these women revolve around

countless, countable – have I been able to go to them?

Shall I ever be able to go to them? With a lot of claims,

nature remains latent, dried up in my garden, the juices

are seized from the succulent veins of the oranges

and before the world-crossing,

you, o daughter of Mohammed,

I see at the final tomb in Bethleham,dressed in a white frock, the crescent Eid moon

on your forehead, bangles on your wrist, like a rose

without a single thorn – it calls me for the last time

beneath my feet, the worldly wheels turn and turn

with a fierce whine, ah, but our love is an intense one.

MONOTOSH CHAKRAVARTY

TO LALDENGA

Open out your palmsthe white flowers of harmony in which

shall decorate their gardens. The mice have fled today

in fear, for the bamboo groves shall see no more blossoms,

the ones which invite hordes of mice, and thus the grain

in the stores is laid to waste, people die in the famine -

those days will not arrive anymore,

the seal of harmony bespeaks a new sunrise today,

such is its astonishing image. Open out your palms,

there is no need for the trumpet of time to be blown,

let these melodious strains of the song of peace flow

about the mountainsides, the jungles and the woods.

Laughing, smiling, those Mizo maidens in colourful attire,Burmese parasols in hand, let them come down

to our peaceful vale.

Today, o friend,

do cast aside all that hostility

and open out your palms, in friendship.




SUNRISE AT BHUBAN HILL

Sunrise at Bhuban Hill: memories of my adolescence.

That scene is replete with the clouds of wanting,

those distant days of thunder and lightning.

That scene houses all those festivals of the past,

those songs sung during the jatra, the rituals

that my mother officiated at, during the Savitrivrata.

That scene conceals many colours of my ineptitude.

I had a thousand different dreams restive like the waterdropson a single lotus leaf, many a thousand dialogues that I had

with thousands of stellar bodies, the sunrise each morning

the light of which would waken me, oblivious to my poverty.

Sunrise at Bhuban Hill

THE MIRROR

Next monsoon there will be a lot of rainfall at Bhuban Hill.

The villages around Silchar will have a golden harvest then,

there will be shoals of fish in the Barak, and at Phatakbazar

there will be no end of cheaply priced fish being sold, blissfully

the wisps of Chaitra’s cotton blossoms shall float in the air

and the childless womb shall bear progeny, this year.

The fish stores full, so with the granary,the cardiac patient turns on one side in the hospital bed,

it’s raining on Bhuban Hill, suddenly some mendicant arrives

and tells you rigmarole to what end, and you listen, transfixed.

We exchange glances in the town of Silchar.




RANAJ IT DAS

THE TREAD OF DEATH

I have heard the tread of Death at nigh t in the yard.

Death has come in the darkling night that has drowned

even the shining moon outside – He looks

like a friend of my father’s, a venerable Vaishnava,

long bodied, peeking through the curtains on the bed

at my father who lies there unwell, unconscious.

But Father responds to his friend’s footsteps.

He tries to move his lips to call out to his friend

and I rush to his side to p our in

a last few drops of water.

My brothers lie asleep in different rooms,

the yard is surrounded by many a palm – arecanuts, coconuts, all of which

Father with his own hands had planted,

the pale moonlight shines on them,

casting longish, morose shadows which guard

the tread of Death.

As he walks ahead,a fruit or two descends to the ground near his feet,

half-eaten by the fruit bat – the transitory life

seeks a moment or two more, those eternal grants.

Inside, Father’s face yet is calm, stern, self-doubting

as the breaths grow weaker, the world-weary breast

collapses slow, as the lips spill open, the life that he has led

is painted across his features n ow – the wretched life

of a refugee across the partitioned nation’s boundaries,

his wretched face wracked by the ravages of living, the paths

that he walked on, his final frontiers, his rising.

Day in and out, he used to take a childish pleasure

in the battledore of life, fighting it out like in a gamefull of enthusiasm, with invincible confidence, honest and right.

The warrior lies silent now, with many feathers in his cap.

The dark courtyard is where his friend awaits him –

His friend, long-bodied, a kirtanniya with a khol ,

and with tears springing in his eyes.




BEAUTIFUL BENGAL

From an endangered amazement

I turn to one that is pure amazement –

from the morgue I return to the post office

to the sunny-smiling-time-that-is-pure-unsullied –

I walk, dust covered; I enter the courtyard and call out –

‘Ma, I need some water to wash my feet.’

Kusumkumari Devi rushes out of the kitchen,

she makes me seat on a mat and serves me puffed ricewith sugar candy; she asks me ‘Would you know

where Jibanananda has gone?’ Silently, I show her

how the shy, reticent Jibanananda walks

the paths of Bengal in the company of Rabi Thakur,

away in the distance, so far, far away.

A POSTCARD FOR MY PATERNAL GRANDFATHER

A sea storm suddenly enters the city of Calcu tta

and calls out my name with a thunderous voice.

It even lights a nightly allusion in the slate-hued c loudswriting my itinerant names thereon

with an intense streak of bright flash.

The cyclone resembles

my angered grandfather come-from-home

It rattles all the doors in the city,

all the while only looking for me.

To my wife and son,

terrified with the terrible assault of the storm,

I say ‘Grandfather has come, I have to go to him,

you must stay safe’ As I step onto the street outside,

the storm slaps my cheeks and roars expletives at me

with a whooshing, breezy noise. All my faults,my fears and my guile for the past year it condemns

as unforgiveable crimes. That Shravan gust

strips me of all my dead branches, all those bats

and all those sloughed skins of snakes

that until then had been part of me.




DILI PKANTI LASHKAR

LOCATINGS

When I answered his query as to where I am from

stating ‘Karimganj, Assam’, he was thrilled

and quite happily he exclaimed – ‘That’s nice,

you speak quite fluent Bangla!’

When somebody as learned, and a littérateur at that

thinks thus, then who am I to say anything else?

I tried to clarify his doubts about the location of my home –

I said ‘I come from the land of the fifteen martyrswho sacrificed their lives for the Bangla language.’

He literally stumped me with his next words

when he straightaway said –

‘Oh, you mean Bangladesh?

You should have said so!’

THE MOTHER TONGUE

Our mother tongue is Bangla

The language of our films is Hindi


The language of our songs is Hindi


The language of our bliss is Hindi


The language of our aspirations is English




THE LEGITIMATE LANDS–ASSAM

The doors are closed everywhere

I rattle so many of them and return

Have they gone away somewhere!

Where is everybody?

Or is it that they have locked themselves within

their houses, in silence?

The sounds of that vicinity are stony,

tears congeal like adamant, the hours driplike so many snowflakes, cold, silenced.

Blood drips too, in the silence and jells into wood.

The gunpowder in the breezes is the last breath from the cadaver.

TAPODHIR BHATTACHARJYA

OF THE INCREATE WATERS

All recitals have ended, so has the lifetime of words

now hear what the increate waters speak

I write stories, with the emptiness of ecphonesises,

with the stagnant waters, not waters but ge stures merely

the sorrow of the forced out earth that sticks to the roots,

the despairing opuses of the dumb, the silence of the deaf

this is all that is – our lives and livings, the progress of our days,

you who would be blind, look, I touch the morose evening hour.

These flames feed on me – this is my own dice-game.

Denuded, I drown completely in these increate waters.




GODDESS

Goddess, I have known you to be the seven horses

of every glorious morning.

After this, the next analogy that assails my pen

is the kaustubhamani.You are not some unearthed idol, you are the sky

that smiles in light

every dawn, every awakening, why then do I write

about the seven horses or the kaustubha?

Words seek to adorn you with awe, therefore this

blindness and it s reverses

bring in an intense light and gradual gestures

of a glow of glory.

Goddess, all locutions, like the sixty-four siddhi s,

have enshrined you in the lotus of the heart

You are Shakambhari , the source of verdure and life

You are Dwiralap , the merger of discourses

You, Goddess, are Yogini, the procreatrix of connexions.

9TH

JULY, 2003

In your own home, you have been rendered voiceless,

no organ declaims you –

The sky is calmed, stilled, blue as yet

only you are absent

Your structures are to dust remanded

and solitude with its trappings

is but an externality.

Whom do the blinded pedestrians look for?

To whom do the endangered directions rush back?

Broken bangles and a nose-ring lie on the road

amidst the pandemonium of the sheath.

Voiceless you have been rendered in your own home,

no organ declaims you.




TIRTHANKAR DAS PURAKAYASTHA

EASTERN CLOUDS

Where do you sway, in which direction, curtains of tresses for disease?

What festive songs drift here from across the meadows of

Palashdanga?

Besides with the long-liver grain, what else do you store up

in solitude, in this barren month?

Tresses for disease, why did you not conceal the mark on your brow

with the cloud-dark sleep that you possess?

Why does it, like always before, look to the east for a rendezvous

when it is evening?

All look for havens – the sunbeams beneath the treeand the terrorised rat on the roads

Tresses for disease and the vigilant pouting brow-mark,

why do you creep in at the horizon slowly

when it is evening?

RITES FOR PASSAGE INTO THE VOID

To the stormy winds I call out

as to the deep waters of the river,

my thirst increases greatly

and the day is set to end.

The minstrel’s lyre thrums beneath the feet

the music of Purnadas Baul,

I hear that cracks have set in – east, west,

north and south – in the earth

that does not see its end.

The bird that seeks a mouthful or two eve ry day,

the day and the night that are a terror,

this and that, things of no consequence, help forget –

this the rite for passage into the void for the rootless.




FOR MY DAUGHTER

I have brought you here at break of dawn , when

the Vesper shines in the sky like the vague light of glances,

another day begins, a tree or two breaks through the misty veils

and there was a new amazement in your newly awakened eyes.

The river can be seen far off, a thin line of water

I have held you in my arms here, in the moon’s light,

These meadows, this sky and a sudden deep trench or two –

all these are for you, for I age fast, as the last ho urs of the night.

The hesitant shadows creep here and there across the land

and a few minutes later shall see the end of all apprehension.

There shall be green shoots, creepers, that shall grow with eyes

locked onto yours; till then, I shall ward off the snakes ’ fangs.

DEBASHISH TARAFDAR

THE LAY OF ASHVIN – 2

I shall leave one day, for Bombay

and there, amid the stars, I shall lose

all my maternal ties; cursed, I shall wander from port to port and wane – such

thoughts assail me with shadows.

If by some trick of fate, I do forget her,

lose her, even in my nightmares

if I am rendered Bengal-less,

then will the Ashvin night

adorn itself in glory without me?

If I die, O beautiful Bengal,

will some other heart assume this?

If some day in Ashvin, I become

a part of the passed, or become

a mechanised clerk somewhere

then, do, O unfortunate one, O mother of a dead one,

read the pages of this volume of poems wrought.




OUR HOUSE

You could look till far out from the windows in any room in our house.There are so many windows and so much light. We have returned after

so much time.

I keep wondering which way to look and where from and how. Should I

look at the breezes across the papaya tree to the south of the house

from the veranda? Or should I watch the launderer busy with his iron to

the east of the house, shaded by a lot of creepers and the leaves of the

neem tree?

I look sometimes at the west side window which I have named the green

jhar okha only because it is clad in green and green all over. Sometimes I

see a bird perch on the cords hung outside and the devdaru gently

swing its hoary head.

I think I should go now and sit at the window to the east – sunshine,

shadows, the small lane – maybe the pheriwa lla will come there today –

How long it has been since I last s aw that lane!

OF NATION (AN EXCERPT)

The four boundaries have been stated. Reader, brow knit in a frown,

so you did encounter the symbols of imperialism? The poet incessantly

acts the imperialist, like kids who keep salvaging titbits, cigarette boxes

handles from broken cups, cards, and tram tickets, and fill their bags.

I am also one who craves such wealth; I have pilfered things from

the roads across the world over an d have built my treasure trove.Each clod of clay in it I prize like a gold trinket and guard it with care.

Like Harangajao. A minor settlement it is. Surrounded by green hills,

with a small river, there people are Sylheti in origin, or Assamese,

or Dimasa, or Nepali, or they speak Hindi – there are many such.

Like the goods in a port, different tongues, different ways of survival,

all mix and mesh in the bazaar there, at the roadside teashop.

Munching on a stale bun, I listen to a cacophony of languages,

its waves touch the heart, that Kachhari nurse, the Hindustani driver,

that teacher from Sylhet – I pilfer them all for myself, no one escapes.

I build nations like that. The pearly snowflakes that hang on the Dahlia

at Christmas in the yard at Shillong, the church bells not afar, the odours

of the fish preserves being cooked, the strains of some invisible girl’s

song,

the blissful rituals that pervade the world, the limbs of the orange tree

bent with th e load of frui t agains t the blue backdrop – All of it is nation .




Each colourful thread I salvage, as many as I can, each scrap of cloth

which I have used to create my nation diversely coloured like a Baul’s

cloak.

The Baul reminds me of the train. The second class compartment there

is the perfect image of a nation. Imagine, a sundry station, the hawker

with his tray of assortments – parasols, knives, handheld fans,

recorders.

An innocent couple bound for a honeymoon trip bends over it,

or a Naga maiden, or a housewife from Lumding returning home after

her stay at her parents’ in Kolkata, they who know language like a

melting pot,

or a small trader from the border near Bhutan – All of this meshes

together

and a whole new nation is born – to imagine a nation is to know this

alchemy.

SHANKARJ YOTI DEB

THE GREAT DEPARTURE

God departed quite silently

Into those jaws opened wide

I cast a drop or few of illusion

Nobod y of his cl an survives –

someone who would light a lamp

to his memory

The flowing breezes cast themselves

around him like a coverlet

The golden autumnal sunshine

suddenly broke into song

Enquiries revealed that it was no dirge

but a song of celebra tion after a ll




SONAPUR, 2001

In the misty mountains, the road struck hard,

the silt moved slow in the hours of the night.

One youth was swept away into the waters

of the Surma, on and on, towards Sunamganj.

Ashraf and Atraf – Hindu-Mussalman –

if those had not been there at all, then maybe

these twisting ways, these lines so pronounced

would not have existed here after all.

Unseen paths there are so many for intrigue

flowing across in the guise of these alienations

here in this deceived land, that is Bharata.

Say, let us go, let us go , do say, go to the othe r bank in sight

Intrigue and all that let us ignore, keeping our eyes’ pure light.

SHILLONG

I cross the city of Tagore’s Shesher Kobita

These days, this city of eastern clouds does not speak,

but it was only that day last, when we conver sed –

I walk the twisting turning paths shadowed by the evening

as the air from across the pines plays around me,

the whooshing sound of the breeze reaches a crescendo

and then suddenly descends, beginning to flow once again

slow, still slow a strain, as if it was a piano playing,

an invisible instrument whose airs throbbed

throughout these misty mountains.

Today, from afar, I glimpse the city dressed gaudily

in a plethora of bright garish lights and I fear,

I fear the darkness that creeps in with the eve ning.




AMITABHA DEV CHOUDHURY

THE BARAK VALLEY EXPRESS

That train which never left, I had been a passe nger on it.

Those kisses at departure were re-birthed as legend

like the great hearth-snake beneath the homestead.

Those rapt waitings invoked the cow-dust hour with the incessant clatter of their hooves on the highway.

Many a train arrived and left after that. Many a slumbering eye

in innumerable compartments opened at the silent station.

Yet that dream devoid shadow that never leaves, and

the departings after that, were delayed, and delayed s till.

All my departings, burdened by that sole non-departing,

become ceaseless returns through the period of a lifetime.

All our stayings, burdened by that sole non-departing,

search for small, cheap hotels on the dismal roadsides

and for succour, for life’s main, for the fates that be.

Between departing and non-departing, there are unmoving bridges

that sooner or later, and quite gradually, turn into confining prisons.

That train which shall never leave, I had been a pas senger on it.

THE REASON WHY I WRITE

I write the language of adamant in a watery script.

Maybe someday a slender seedling shall thrust

its brow upwards from that impervious stony surface.

This desire I perceive in the depths of the waters




OF ALL THAT IS STALE

I have politely thrust aside this becalmed busyness.I have tried to acquire a restive tranquillity.

One day on this living shall be shed the sun’s shining light.

Quilts, manuscripts, all and sundry shall I shake and spread

out in the warmth that moment – such had been my desire,

though covered all around with clouds that had been then.

I have often opened the lids of the trunks –

many a rat has spent many a night on these.

Only the odour remains in the heart of the clothes.

The words that the rats have pillaged, I gather them and try

to set those in meaningful order, in solitude, out of sight.

Whatever I have written till date, all of that is worn out, stale.

One day the sun shall feast on this life, this living -

Such is my desire, though covered all around with clouds it is.

ANITA DAS TANDON

ACROSS BOUNDARIES

The shadows lengthen with the maturing day, the sun

creeps across the courtyard. The birds, noting this,

are terrified of the oncoming dark and flee back home.

The sun’s decease terrorises the moon into the clouds.

The darkness gathers. The light of the hurricane lamp

flickers in the tumultuous wind. Somewhere I hear

a dismal sigh that turns on its side – so far, so far behind.

All of that we have left behind us across those boundaries.

Here it is cold – an intense, powerful chill.




OF THE NOWAAI BIRD

Come back to me, o nowaai bird,

do come back to me, soon.

The letter hidden in your plumage

you have not delivered to anybody.

Come back to me, o nowaai bird,

I wait endlessly for that letter

which I had thrust with my own hands

in your feathers, in some other life.

O nowaai bird, do come back soon.

The cow-dust hour will soon be here.

You will return, won’t you, before

this darkness palls my eyes?

THE MUTED LANGUAGE

When innumerable silences

beg me for largesse of soun d,

palms o utstre tched, I, who converse

with myself ceaselessly, tremble.

My inner meditations are stilled

and on all sides descends calm.

I try to say something in a language

that is so ancient that no one knows it.

When I try to speak, only a few

muted moans escape my unused tongue.

Hapless, I suddenly realise how futile,

how muted my converse is.




SWARNALI BISWAS BHATTACHARJYA

THAKURMA’S REPERTORY

THE STORY OF LOTUS-RED AND LOTUS-BLUE

As the tuntuni bird perches

on the Sojna tree’s branches,

jus t then does th e school bus

arrive at Lotus-Red’s house.

Lotus-Blue and Red are names,

they are brothers at academe,

studies do not allow them,

their gambol and their games.

That magic flying horse

is lost in the worried fuss

of homework and of class

and even then it is worse.

Best them someone might

and climb the golden ladder

so they have no time to wait

and enjoy the golden hour.

They return home to finally rest

when the day’s gone away west.

To where did their dreams flee?What seized them away?

Their childhood’s halcyon day,

those cycles of tale and story.

Demon hordes gain

in the darkling field.

Babe snatchers wield

newer plots of pain.Green card-pound-dollar

clutch Lotus-Red and Blue

around the neck in collar

and take them away too.

The golden wand or silver

and the magic rod - all lost.

I weave here dreams afar

for you to return at last.

Careless breezes meandering

and a bit of fun freewheeling,

in the happy clouded days,

across the meadows flying.

Clench reality’s iron rod, dears,

yet try and if you will, wage,

your war to save, to salvage

these dreams despite your fears.




THE STORY OF SIMPLE-DIMPLEHEAD

I have crossed to here at day’s end,

the disguised Prince of Wonderland,

shores more than a thousand, and

the waves of River of Coloured Sand.

Gracious-princess-lonely-waiting

atop a five storeyed castle rising,will you fly to those distant worlds

with me, across the far rice fields?

Dark waves of conspiracy rise,

the leafy skiff flounders here.

Loud motorbikes, so streetwise

princes five will ride the air –

Offspring we are of a mother indigent,

these fates gift us but the pavement.

It is useless even to dream here.

Imprisoned princess, this songbird rare,

you play with it and with the b ird of bliss,

on the chat window, the games of peers

in the cyber world that is a global room.

Your father is a great, moneyed man,

so he wants for you an N. R. I. groom.

Princess, look carefully,

do you not know me, really?

I have brought you pearl-blossoms,

dusty books filled with many a poem,

heart-song-wild-grass-leaves and blooms.

For you alone, lovely princess, here I am.

Come, flee with me this monotonous town,

this benighted place in netherworlds grown.




THE TALE OF SUN-BOY WATER-BOY AND RADIANT-

LASS

(Remembering Kamala, she who was martyre d for the cause of her

language)

The brothers turned to stone

the sister at home waits alone –

The nineteenth of May rises in the hea rt

as does February’s great twenty-first.

The magic stone, illusion’s oceans rolling,

and between them rises a sorcery unending.

Sun-Boy and Water-Boy lost to nowhere

Radiant-Lass their sister is lonely here.

Eyes flowing with fire, their lips uttering disgust –

a score of rivers did they cross unto Death’s last.

That must be salvaged; one’s lost mother langua ge,

the skies are desolate, the breezes are on a rampage.

The letters of the alphabet descended as drops of holy unction.

Thus Sun-Boy and Water-Boy rose alive from their stony prison.

The lost tongue of birth and race returned as glorious as before.

Bangla, dismal, destitute mother once, was queenly once more.

SAPTARSHI BISWAS

THE WAITING ROOM

A rural railway station

sometimes it wakens, and then sometimes it recedes to a deep sleep.

The hoary banyan bent with many years watches this, on and on.

The red-brick waiting room

lay waiting here for the travellers

and resting thus, it succumbed at last

to time and was razed to the dust, long ago.

And then the station rose beyond all stoppages,

and all waitings that had been and were,

the hoary, old banyan still watched

and remembered the first train

at this station –

Remembrances of those days,

of the many coloured engines

that had been once derailed

here, at this station.




O POET, O DEPARTED POET

(On receiving the news of Shaktipada Brahmachari’s demise)

Like the other poet’s, your words too

will be spoken of for some more time

Like a fresh wound is separation’s pain,

it stings when wet, for some more time

The flames will feed on flesh, more death-wise human flesh

Then one midnight, your offspring

will rush out of bed on hearing the ne wborn’s cries,

and will forget you entirely

as they would cross the yard to the delivery room.

As I wait beside your funeral pyre, I muse at howyou must have built this house with a lot of care.

You must have also kept rigorous vigil

outside the delivery room so that you could hear

the first cries of the newborn babe then.

MY HAY HUT

Those clouds so white float across the sky, across the world’s edge.

The brave rider of the breezes rides across the hayfield, but barely

touching it, seeking the horizon the green grass shivers slightly

remembering those little children’s feet that once had walked on it.

The leaves waft across the paths in response to the afternoon’s call.

All through the sky where the sun sets the birds quest for something.

It seems that it is so, near the river, beneath the fragmented clouds,

my home, my little hut of hay made, all alone, solitary, lies in waiting.




SHELLY DAS CHOUDHURY

KHUKU’S LIBRARY AND I

One day, I suddenly entered Khuku’s library, but she was not thereI mumbled to myself her name, but no one called, or answered.

I run my palm across her shelves, it comes to rest on a pile of tomes.

I am proud, as it is, for Khuku will be a scholar one day.

I wonder at her intelligence.

Khuku rattles off English words so easily at her tender age.

Who could tell how she managed to do master that foreign tongue?

Yet at her age, we had been used more to sponging our slates

and scribing names on it – names of fruits and animals and what not

with misspellings a lot while wet to the bone we used to chant

in the rain or the mist,

“Shibthakur’s going to get married.......”

Khuku knows her arithmetic, such complex ones they are!

She solves them with barely a wink like would a computer.

Wonder girl she is! And to think that I have to calculate

even now, using the fingers on my h and.

Arithmetic I do not at all understand.

I place my palm on Khuku’s shelves.

Whatever wont you find there!

But not a single Bangla book –

Khuku does not know Bangla,

she speaks it like a foreign tongue.

Such hopes we have for her.

I wish to kill myself in Khuku’s library

I and my corpse –

we are alone together in Khuku’s library.

ABOUT KHUKU

1.

She makes mistakes over and over,

and I scold her, berate her, saying

‘Hopeless you are’.

For someone

as poor at arithmetic as you, there’s nothing

that can be done or any good that they can do.

You are in for trouble, Khuku,

I tell her, emptiness looms ahead

in your life, it is writ large in your fates.

Khuku stares at me listlessly, not realising

what I meant. Indeed, how can Khuku know

what this warning of emptiness entails?

2.

Khuku, you have amassed a mountain – a pile of loose paper and incorrect sums

that obstructs the moonlight with its bulk.

How wonderful! how strange! the moon is hid

by the sides of this mountain of incorrec t sums




KAVYASHREE BAKSHI BHATTACHARJYA

THAT DEMENTED GIRL

Itinerant these nights the girl has wrought.

A draught of water has swept away the dreams

of dressed and garnished lavish chews – what

madness seizes her? Her hair flies tousled,

her body is bared. Those scraps of cloth like flags

are tied onto the branches, no one here walks

save the waters that float across the lanes and by-lanes.

Hearts rend but no cries of agony rise, the breeze is silent.

The heart-garden drowns in flowing flood waters

that flow ceaseless, the girl alone shoulders her burden.

When the dense clouds stoop, the surprised winds shriek

and the windows are lost in the haze, the waters make

their own watery windowpanes.

The sun peeks through the clouds.

The madly rushing rivers are grown large as the sea.

Stilled waters reveal drowned grain fields and homes

and then the floating woman gathers her meandering limbs.And since it has been, a sharp cleaver in hand, this destruction

parts t he waters, t ears t he waves with the tongues of snakes

slowly the dashing waves cease, s lowly the flood waters recede

while the demented girl giggles endlessly at the gory corpse.

94 bordering poetry

bordering poetry

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