Jibanananda Das Poems

It has been a thousand years since I started trekking the earth
A huge travel in night’s darkness from the Ceylonese waters
to the Malayan sea
I have been there too: the fading world of Vimbisara and Asoka
...

I remember I used to be a king of Babylonia
You were my slave girl,
In the night,
...

Ah kite, golden-winged kite, don’t cry any more this noon
of moist clouds, as you hover around the Dhanshniri river
Your whimper reminds of her eyes dim as pale cane-fruit!
A pretty princess she has drifted afar,
...

It was heard: to the post-mortem cell
he had been taken;
last night—in the darkness of Falgoon-night
When the five-night-old moon went down—
...

Once in a starry night sprawling on the cloud's edge
It occurred: am I a soul—or merely a ghostly spirit?

Under the moonlight of a desolate sea I discern
...

There is no meaning in living—I don't say this.
There is meaning for some, may be for all—may be a perfect meaning.
Yet I hear the white sound of wind-driven birds
In the water of the distant seas
...

I discern a few birds somewhere outside on grass,
dew drops dry-up in the sun rays
a few people—around their corn-field,
lonely like human beings
...

All day I inevitably encounter a cat here and there
In the shadow of trees or out in the sun, around
the pile of fallen leaves;
I catch sight of him, deeply engrossed like a bee,
...

Lying upon the stretcher perhaps fog clogs your eyes
Don't worry, death is not another unjust light;
How come then so many people embrace death,
craving a torch like flying ants?
...

Here lies Sarojini; I don't know if she is lying here!
Enough she had slept; — then one day she left for a far-away cloud.
Has Sarojini travelled that far, where - darkness over - a new horizon
wakes up under the focus of light?
...