Look! Otto Hahn’s iron-peacocks
Float
On Heraclitus’s river;
In the morning restaurants, see
...
The machine is asleep. But somewhere
The nature-machine keeps awake!
Serene, noiseless and calm.
...
1.
The waves of the abstract night
come relentless in foamy form.
...
হেরাক্লিতাসের নদীতে, দ্যাখো, ভেসে চলেছে
অটো হানের লৌহ-ময়ূরেরা;
সকালের রেস্তোরাঁয়, দ্যাখো, টনকে টন গমদানা
ফুলে উঠছে সূর্য-তন্দুরের আঁচে
...
This smile is mine. Yet it forsakes me
to illuminate the cheeks of others.
As if I am some wanton fish, who
...
Running is a necessity. Yet the horse
is a more important gambit.
And this land of the motionless is like a stable
deserted and full of voids.
...
Don't go. Stay with me
At least as the fate of the third world.
Yet the train will be on it's course
...
You are stuffing gunpowder into
the silent cannon
All by yourself. When winter is
over
...
A plate of rice hang's from cloud's rope.
shanty houses of the unfed stand below.
There I am the lone hero.
...
Spread-Eagle Lady Teacher's Smile
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Spread-eagle lady teacher's smile is rose-colored.
...
[[So he cried out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me
and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water
and cool my tongue.
- Luke 16: 24; The Bible]]
...
দৌড় খুব প্রয়োজন। তারও চেয়ে প্রয়োজন ঘোড়া
তবে এ-স্থাণুুর দেশ যেন ফাঁকা জীর্ণ আস্তাবল
প্রেম খুব প্রয়োজন। কিন্তু সে-ও হাঁ-মুখ মৃত্যুর
...
Don't go. Stay with me
At least as the fate of the third world.
Yet the train will be on it's course
...
Don't go. Stay with me
At least as the fate of the third world.
Yet the train will be on it's course
...
Mirage of an island flickers in a far-off sea.
Every now and then
...
Sitting By The Tandoor
Look! Otto Hahn’s iron-peacocks
Float
On Heraclitus’s river;
In the morning restaurants, see
how tonnes of wheat
Puff up in sun’s tandoor
Clouds, translucent and white,
drift across the moon
And, in his own cornfield,
Binay Majumdar stoops.
I remembered him
When the pines were tossing
their heads as if in
Self-resentment; leaves falling
aimlessly and
The strange, possessed,
machine coughing all day!
Cards of different suits wafting on
the air
Our blood-o-polis brims with
peasant-traps;
And the poet waits in front of an
alighted gas-burner
Oh, Silvia Plath! You burned
yourself like glass!
—Quandary swayed!
Those that have come past many
a traffic light,
Which of the faces do you wear?
Who among you propagate the
greased corns and who was it
That put his own wings to fire?
Now wait and see what comes
out of the tandoor,
To whom our daily bread rolls!
[Translated from the original Bengali by fellow poet and friend Subrata Augustine Gomes]